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As usual, thereductiveness with which these bands have been grouped together by theelite contingent of music critics thus far has led to a lot ofgeneralization that is unfair to the artists involved. Instead of justtalking about how the music actually sounds, we are expected only totalk about how this fits into a larger movement, or exploit the musicand aesthetics for some political end. For bands like Excepter, thisapproach just doesn't fly. Not only do they sound significantlydifferent, Excepter have a longer history than most of the other bandsgrouped under the "Brooklyn Noise" heading.
Excepter is the brainchildof John Fell Ryan, a former member of the No Neck Blues Band, whobrings with him from his former collective a canny sense ofimprovisational dynamics. Ryan and the four other members of Exceptercreate a unique brand of improvised electronics that does not dependupon laptops and preprogrammed, post-techno routines, but rather on acommunal, ritualistic idea of music slowly coalescing and emerging fromgroup play. Their live performances are truly unique events, throwingtense Throbbing Gristle energy together with Berliniamsburgelectroclash posturing, extended krautrock jams with druggy shoegazerrock, beatific ambient washes of sound with eruptions of paint-peelingnoise and clunky analog chatter.
Their first full-length KA was a very impressive debut album, and their newly released follow-up Thronesshows that the band is not through tinkering with their sound. Wherethe first album was eclectic and mercurial from track to track, Thronescreates a mood and chases it to its conclusion, never straying too farfrom the path. As such, it's something more of a trudge than KA,and some will not have the patience for the full journey. But it is arewarding listen, a trance-inducing combination of analog pulses,looped samples, fractured drum machines, swirling guitar noise, fieldrecordings and echoplexed male and female vocal wails lost in amaelstrom of reverb. It's rather more insistently dark than itspredecessor, in contrast to the bright ocean paradise pictured on thesleeve.
The title is a Biblical reference to one of Daniel's moreapocalyptic and prophetic dreams: "I beheld till the thrones were castdown, and the Ancient of days did sit, whose...throne [was like] thefiery flame, [and] his wheels [as] burning fire." The music doesjustice to this hallucinatory prophecy, creating an environment abuzzwith eerie, cavernous echoes from a hazily envisaged future calamity,voices yawning back into the void, swirling and cracking apart in thebrutal crashing sound waves. If Excepter continue to evidence the samewillingness to experiment with and expand their soundworld, they couldvery well have as long and distinguished a career as the No Necks, andperhaps some day critics won't find it necessary to pigeonhole themalong with their NYC contemporaries.
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