Mice Parade - Collaborations
(Bubblecore)
Bubblecore, the music label run by members of the Dylan Group, has also
put out records by Him (Dough Scharin of June of 44, Codeine, etc.), Rex,
and Child's View (Nobukazu Takemura). For the latest release of Mice
Parade, the solo project of Adam Pierce of the Dylan Group, someone at
Bubblecore must have run up quite a phone bill calling all those guys again,
asking, "Can you do us another favor?"
This release, Collaborations, is a set of five (surprise) collaborations, one
with Him, one with Curtis Harvey of Rex, one with Takemura, and remixes of that
Takemura collaboration by Jim O'Rourke and Takemura himself. Not to get all
philosophical, but should we really consider a remix to be a collaboration?
Was Bill Laswell "collaborating" with long dead Miles Davis on the
Panthalassa album? Certainly a stretch. Was Busta Rhymes "collaborating" with
the guy who wrote the Knight Rider theme on his song where he uses
that theme? Yeah, right. So, if you're looking into hearing this album for Jim
O'Rourke's input, keep in mind that his is not a pure collaboration.
The Him collaboration, "The Fall From Andalucia," starts off the album
with close to 11 minutes of Spanish sounding acoustic guitar, live drumming,
vibes, and keyboard generated bird calls. The song is not bad, especially since
I consider most of Scharin's work in Him tedious, but, considering the number
of times you hear the same phrases repeated over and over, the song is twice as
long as it needs to be.
The Curtis Harvey collaboration, "Rela Circle," comes in two parts. The first
five minutes is based on interplay between acoustic guitar and (I believe)
harpsichord, backed by keyboard and various percussion. Certainly, there is
more going on here than in the entire 11 minutes of the
Him collaboration. The 50 second postlude to the song sounds a lot like a
run of the mill Rex song, with strummed acoustic guitar and Harvey's lead
vocals.
The Takemura collaboration, "Mystery Brethren Vironment," also comes in two
parts. The first part is a fairly sparse mix of keyboard
sprinkles, acoustic guitar, rock drums, and female singer Aki Tsuyuko's la-las.
The drums do sound out of place, but they don't distract too much from the
vocal and keyboard flourishes. At the four and a half minute mark, everything
starts to simmer down except for the drums, which don't miss a beat as they
head right into the rock and roll section of the song, featuring a
Curve or My Bloody Valentine-like shoegazing guitar part, as Tsuyuko's vocals
turn from las to hey-hey-heys and ooooooos.
The two remixes of the Takemura collaboration aren't very interesting and
might not be worth hearing more than once. In the first part of his remix,
O'Rourke decides to turn the short bursts of acoustic guitar from the first
half of the song into a longer, steadily repeating section. Next, he simply
mixes the rock part of the original with a programmed drumbeat. For the third
section, which takes up most of the remix, O'Rourke makes an Oval-esque bed
of clicks and bleeps along with a simple bass line to back Tsuyuko's altered
vocals. Finally, he mixes the same shoegazing guitars with a slowed down
drum machine beat to create a gooier sound. Hearing the contrast between
a fast and slow beat backing the same guitars is an interesting effect, but,
really, once you hear it, how much replay value is there? The Takemura
remix is less interesting, sounding like what would happen if you just shook
all the artists as they played.
This release was originally intended to be for Japan only, but Bubblecore
has decided to give it a US release as well. I am certainly glad they did,
as I quite enjoy the Harvey and Takemura collaborations. If this album was
just a 12" with those two songs, it would be well worth picking up. As it is,
there's a little bit too much to wait through at the beginning and end of the
disc to give it a fully positive recomendation.
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