Mindflayer - Its Always 1999
(Load)
Mindflayer's first widely available CD, Take Your Skin Off, released by Bulb in early 2003, was not the Providence "super" group's debut. Various releases from the duo of Lightning Bolt thunder maker Brian Chippendale and Forcefield electro-magician Meerk Puffy had been birthed quietly and disappeared relatively quickly into a limited edition oblivion. This disc, recorded in 1999 (hence the title, perhaps?) and released by Ooo Mau Mau in 2001, is far from the first recorded material by the duo to be unearthed (live Mindflayer recordings exist from dates as early as 1996), but it does offer a chance to hear the band in their more formative stages. Chippendale and Puffy, have, in a sense, always had fairly simple musical modi operandi: Chippendale's spastic drumming keeps rhythm in clattering, fervent explosions, and Puffy's mutated electronics fizzle and burn like science experiments gone wrong. Its Always 1999 is not a departure from said sounds; it, in fact, it contains some excellent examples of the kind of musical TNT that makes Mindflayer's live show so powerful, and made Take Your Skin Off an unsung highlight of 2003. The dark Dungeons and Dragons atmosphere of their more recent disc takes a backseat here to broken Sci-Fi wizardry, something that, especially given Puffy's noises of choice, might seem more appropriate for the band. Tracks with bizarre titles like "Legiomnomein and G Furry (Legos)" and "Carry on My Wayward Crawler" explore both the insistent rhythmic pieces that form Mindflayer's more minimalist work, and the all-out explosions of sound that most listeners expect from the duo.
In many ways, Its Always 1999 features a band already hitting upon many of the things that will soon make them an even more powerful force. What's missing, though, is the blunt force that made Take Your Skin Off so undeniably effective. This isn't to say that this earlier material is any less abrasive or uncompromising, but that Mindflayer's strength lies in the jagged grooves that they're able to create, head-bangers brimming with the musical equivalent of hydrochloric acid. The 1999 incarnation of the band has yet to truly capitalize on this, though tracks like "The Psychic Fields of Animal Town" do tap into it. Its Always 1999, however, doesn't lock into these grooves enough, and the nearly seventy-two minutes of music on the disc become a bit much. The basic Mindflayer formula is there, but the magic that they'd one day ensnare is still fleeting. The lo-fi recording of the music doesn't necessarily help, although Chippendale, and many of Mindflayer's contemporaries in Providence have managed to elevate the gritty, tinny sounds of less advanced recording techniques to heights not reached by this disc, so the fidelity of the recording becomes almost a non issue. Its Always 1999 isn't deficient when it comes to the basic structures of the songs, either, it simply needs the shot of mutant testosterone that would make Mindflayer's follow-up what it was. Perhaps it's unfair to compare these albums in retrospect, but, no matter how impressive Its Always 1999 might have sounded during the last century, the fact that Mindflayer have already outdone themselves since its release can't help but negate some of the album's energy in 2004.
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