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Further Ellipses was recorded with an entirely different personnel than the first two S.O. albums. By 1980, guitarist John Bisset-Smith quit the group to concentrate on his work in Grow Up, and the rest of the band followed suit, citing various other reasons. The first lineup of Spherical Objects had performed live only a few times, including one gig opening for Magazine, during which they were booed and spat on by an impatient audience. Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that it was so easy for the band to move on to other projects. In their place, Solamar recruited guitarist Roger Blackburn (also from Grow Up), and session players drawn from the ranks of the Manchester Musicians' Collective. (It's worth noting that the MMC was an organization that Solamar actively promoted during his time in the music business, releasing a compilation LP called A Manchester Collection on Object that showcased the work of these young artists.)
Not least because of the fact that right around the time of its release, Solamar finally made the decision to become a woman, Further Ellipses has the feel of a transitional work. As an album, it is neither here nor there, and for much of the time, the session musicians seem like they are anywhere but present as they are playing. It's hard to escape the lackluster feeling of much of the record, and even virtuoso touches like the Spanish guitar on "The Final Part" or the saxophone solo on "Regular Condition" sound terribly corny with the benefit of hindsight; competent, but poorly conceived. Even Solamar's lyrics feel a bit wedged into the melodies here, unlike the first two records, where he was rarely off his game.
Even with its obvious flaws, there are some interesting moments here, mostly because Solamar's identity crisis has reached its zenith, and the tense, self-interrogating lyrics attest to this intense emotional state. On "Regular Condition," he speaks ironically about his gender dysphoria: "Don't worry, this is a regular condition/Thousands of people have to deal with this every day." On "The Root," he sounds like a man frantically searching for a solution to an unresolvable paradox: "I wish I could get to the root of the problem." On "Don't Worry About Me," Solamar sings: "Don't worry about me, I've got my therapy/The image in my mind's eye, it just frees me." Though all of these lyrics certainly could be expressing universal emotions, it seems unavoidable to relate this to Solamar's transgenderism, and this pervasive, unconscious theme succeeds in redeeming the album, which otherwise has not aged particularly well.
No Man's Land is Solamar's swansong, and the final album released on his own Object Music imprint. By now, the transgender theme has become explicit, and tracks such as "One Way Out" cannot be read any other way: "I get confused, too much doubt/Made up my mind, just one way out." On tracks such as "Terminal Romance," Solamar unceremoniously shifts his low vocal growl into a higher, feminine quaver, striving to achieve his gender transformation vocally. The music on No Man's Land is almost completely given over to Solamar's peculiar take on the blues, with many tracks retaining a basic 12-bar structure, and containing harmonica solos. This makes for a particularly odd end product, as Solamar's unmistakable Mancunian accent and punk sneer are utterly at odds with electric blues. Additionally, transgender identity issues are not the sort of problems usually tackled by blues musicians. These strange, off-putting juxtapositions gives the entire enterprise the feel of bizarre song-poems or outsider music, even though by this time Solamar and his fellow bandmates were very much "insiders."
Knowing Solamar's biography is pretty much essential to experiencing these last two albums by Spherical Objects. Without this context, the music might strike most listeners as deserving its obscurity. With the historical context provided by Louise Alderman's great liner notes, these albums can be experienced as artistic autobiography, a unique document of an artist poised on the edge of a drastic, life-changing decision. To the extent that art can provide us with a "forgery of the unconscious," as psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan claimed, Spherical Objects represents a fascinating case study.
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These two albums were originally released in 1978 and 1979 on Object Music, Manchester label formed by Steve Solamar in order to release records by his own band Spherical Objects. Though the label quickly branched out and released albums by other acts—Grow Up, Steve Miro and most notably, The Passage—it had effectively ceased operations by 1981, and the records quickly disappeared into obscurity. The reason for the label's dissolution is too fascinating not to relate right up front: by 1980, Solamar had decided to become a woman, and ended label operations in order to prepare himself mentally and physically for his transformation.
Knowing what eventually happened, it is impossible to listen to Spherical Objects without hearing signs and auguries of Solamar's eventual transformation. The very first track on 1978's Past and Parcel, for instance, contains the line: "Sometimes I think I should have been a woman/Sometimes it'd be a lot easier that way." On "You Can Become," Solamar sings: "You can become just what you desire." By the time of Spherical Objects' very last album No Man's Land, this theme had become explicit, as made clear in the album's title. All that aside, listening to these albums should be more than simply an occasion for trans-spotting, and happily there is much here that is compelling beyond the obvious fascination presented by Solamar's story.
Spherical Objects was, for all intents and purposes, the project of Solamar alone, who wrote all of the songs save one in the band's catalog. The band was made up of hires and session musicians who had almost no creative input. Band members would receive a sequenced cassette of Solamar playing his songs on acoustic guitar. The songs and the sequencing would remain unchanged throughout the recording process, which would occur after a few days of band rehearsal in which all arrangements were quickly worked out. This was a band working in the service of Solamar's songs and vision, a fact which is quite obvious when listening to the music, especially on these first two albums.
Past and Parcel is peculiar even by the standards of post-punk. Although it is a "rock" record at least as far as instrumentation is concerned, there is something oddly detached and tentative about these pieces. The arrangements often feel a bit slapdash or even incomplete, and Solamar's throaty, foregrounded vocals take some getting used to. After a period of adjustment, the songwriting itself is the element that asserts itself most strongly; Solamar has the talent to write good-to-great pop songs with strong hooks and memorable lyrics. His blunt, introspective lyrical style stands out, even when the arrangements fail him. The sound lies in some weird liminal zone between the pop-punk of the Buzzcocks, the mannered sound of post-punk bands such as Magazine, and musical references as varied as Brian Eno's early glam-pop records, John Cale, and especially Nuggets-era garage psych, an influence which would come to the fore on Spherical Objects' second and finest album.
Elliptical Optimism is the album on which things really come into focus for Solamar and the band. Guitarist John Bisset-Smith's abilities have seemingly improved immeasurably, and the presence of horns, synths and organs make for denser arrangements that bolster Solamar's songwriting. Though the entire album is listenable, and hardly sounds dated even now, there are a few outright winners here. The disco pastiche of "Comedians" is a highlight, as is the title track, which turns absurdist wordplay ("Tongues twisted with talking/But you're blowing your solution/Bubblegum euphemism, elliptical optimism/Don't let that bubble catch your nose") into psychedelic profundity with wobbly synth peals, wacky cartoon noises and a whole lot of delay and reverb. Elliptical Optimism is one of those albums that should be spoken of in the same breath as the rest of the post-punk critical canon along with Chairs Missing, Kilimanjaro or Entertainment!, but various factors, including its scarcity, have conspired to keep it virtually unknown.
As usual, LTM/Boutique does a great job here compiling both records along with a couple of 45s onto one disc, with copious liner notes, artwork and photographs of the band. This is meant as a companion piece to the other S.O. disc Further Ellipses / No Man's Land, released simultaneously, but the inclusion of the band's superior second album makes this collection the essential of the two. However, as with many LTM/Boutique reissues, the question is not whether these unearthed obscurities count as lost classics or essential pieces of the post-punk puzzle. Instead, the music is simply presented, in context, in order to give a bigger and more complex portrait of a musical era that has a tendency to be reduced to broad strokes, a few big names and labels, a Hollywood biopic or two. Releases like this prove that there is always more to the picture than what is revealed by chroniclers who make sweeping generalizations about an era.
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As a member of Grails, Riles' guitar exercises often blend the excitement of spaghetti western soundtracks with something more enigmatic. Hints of music from the Middle East and other misunderstood parts of the world illicit a sense of wonder, especially when they're used effectively by a rock band. It adds a touch of mystery and danger to the music because the imagination of the western listener is still caught up in the fanciful depictions of an exotic culture. Despite years of cultural contact, PBS specials, and Hollywood abuse, the eastern world remains mostly impenetrable. So when Riles elicits that world through references to its religious, popular, and historical music, he simultaneously conjures up an air of the unknown. This kind of aping can be found in all kinds of music and, as bands like Gang Gang Dance have proven, it can be used to hide an embarrassing lack of creativity or ingenuity. For Riles it is one effective tool among many; among the smokey oud passages and gong crashes one will find the familiar and tangible sounds of American psychedelic music and the meandering guitars of the Fahey tradition.
The record follows a distinct arc. It begins out in the open air and descends into dark and foreboding places before re-emerging into daylight at the end. "Pacific Siren" begins with the sampled sound of the beach. The music, once it starts, calls to mind the legend of Blind Joe Death and the simple, sometimes sunny songs to which his talent was attributed. Riles' guitar rambles to and fro with bright chords on this particular song, the wave-like plucking definitely recalling the sound of the ocean crashing against the beach. This music is firm and grounded to the earth and often reminds me of hot, lazy summers spent staying cool. From there the character of the record changes and punchy rhythms collide with more exotic instrumentation. Moaning violins, a harpsichord, and long, winding electric guitars pass in and out of each other and replace the familiar with something both darker and less earthly. The saz and the oud become the primary instruments during the middle portion of the record and the melodies developed therein become longer and looser. The record takes an epic tone at points, especially when Riles pulls every instrument out of the bag that he can. On "Before the Refuge" tribal drums pound away beneath electric freak-outs and violas hum over sharply curving acoustic passages that sound as though they're aching to leave the material world.
Eventually the intensity of the record reaches its peak and Riles returns to the place where he started. While "Slack Key" is a partial blend of the two styles that dominate the record, "Chloe" is nearly a complete rock 'n' roll song. With the sound of thunder interrupting the song in places, a strummed guitar and an electric solo combine to create a sensation of alleviation. The song's weightlessness dissolves into the sound of crickets and rain before the record fades out entirely. Given the album's cinematic progression, it's tempting to think of Riles' work as a cinematic accompaniment, but the record is complete unto itself and works towards its own end. That end may not necessarily be transcendent in intent, but the upwards trajectory of the album's second half does call to mind the religiously centered themes of Popul Vuh and other similar bands. The addition of American folk music to the transcendent recipe is not a new idea (Robbie Basho was thinking about this in the mid '60s), but Riles incorporates it in his own unique manner and helps to affirm its potency outside the realm of academic appreciation and nostalgia.
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As a full work, this self-titled album is largely omnious drone, most tracks mixing abrasive sonic elements with the pure sounds of the harmonium, most obviously on "Bones, Beer, and Muscle" and "Basics of Sleep." The latter of which—the longest track on the album—features tactile crunchy vinyl textures, and organ to compliment the harmonium. The former features more clearly defined guitar and rhythmic string plucking, being one of the more sparce pieces.
Other tracks focus more on the bass: both "Our Karma is Broken" and "Pack Mule" are lead by overdriven fuzzed bass guitar, the first with a loud bed of noise in the background, the latter having guitar that sounds like it was played through an old intercom, buried voices, yet a memorable and musical quality to it, despite the dissonance. "Eleventh Rib," on the other hand, adds in treated found sounds and more traditional sounding guitar work.
Some of the tracks actually have a more ambient, less sinister vibe: though it ends with a storm of white noise, "Requiem for a Liar" also has its share of bird calls and a rich, underlying element of ambient music that feels warmer than most of the other tracks on the album. Others are not so sinister, but they are just harsh: "Unlisted Disasters" is all scrapes and stabs of noise, a rudimentary bass rhythm underpinning jagged guitar noise.
The closing "Good Night Francine" is an appropriate coda for the album, a focus on feedback is met with atmospheric electronics and shrill outbursts of noise, before being stripped down into a spaced out, organ and harmonium led ending. As a work of droning sound, it is a complex interconnected album of mixed instrumentation, leading to a breathing, organic whole of music that manages to be abstract, yet familiar and memorable.
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Consisting of one long piece, In Remembrance of Me is a study in the sounds of playback. Stelzer's tape heads roll over dirty cassettes, Sullivan's vinyl scratches grind the needle to dust, and faint radio playback hums beneath intimate mechanical manipulations. The result is a dark and static sound world that more closely resembles the sound of cars in a tunnel or the inside of a vacuum cleaner than overt destruction. It is a grim and demolished listen but also a rich one, full of detail and warm physicality.
Opening with the familiar crackle of cassette hiss, the piece unveils its elements patiently. Distant taps and sliding holes of sound reel among each other as rusted frequencies emit themselves. Indeed, Sullivan and Stelzer often seem more initiates of a process—albeit a guided one—than controlled musical catalysts. As tape is run over heads and odd distant hums murmur beneath whispered vinyl shifts, a refreshing freedom manifests that is largely devoid of any standard forms of musical expression. There seems a near academicism to it all in fact, more in line with the output of Stockhausen's "Kontakte" works than the turntablism of Christian Marclay or the noise efforts of Merzbow.
As the piece progresses, it continues to unfold into pockets of process whose sources are difficult to identify but highly varied in nature. Caked in a thick layer of analog dust, each sound is given a character apart from its means while still maintaining its sense of industrial reworking. One moment, there is the sound of contact mics rubbed against rotating vinyl; the next, the turning is allowed to speak for itself. There are pockets so dense that it is nearly impossible to decipher what sounds are coming from where, yet there are others that are stripped down to what sounds like the white noise created by the instrument's very existence in the room. That all of these modes contain the restraint and inwardness that they do is an impressive feat, and one that provides the work with a near ambient, timless quality.
By the time In Remembrance reaches its end, with its increasingly distressed nature, it becomes clear that this is a work born from the great care of veteran experimentalists. Its mechanized nature is impressively stagnant yet engulfed in movement and constant change, giving it an organicism that is too often ironically lacking in music made from far less automated means.
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Maerz has had quite an unusual career. She got her "big break" while attending secretarial school. She was singing at a cassette manufacturer’s booth at an exhibition and got invited to participate in a talent contest organized by Pepsi-Cola (I like to imagine that Karlheinz Stockhausen started exactly the same way). She didn’t win, but her performance earned her a contract with Polydor. Sadly, her first two singles failed to chart and she was quickly dropped.
However, shortly after this setback, a chance meeting at a recording studio resulted in the release of the aforementioned "Er Ist Weider Da". During the brief but intense fame that ensued, she became the first German female ever to appear on the pop music television show Beat-Club and none other than Paul McCartney was rumored to be a big fan of the single's B-side ("Blau Blau Blau"). She even recorded a song written for her by the Kinks' Ray Davies. Unfortunately, all that was soon followed by several years of waning popularity, frustration with her material, and mounting disillusionment.
Released nearly six years after her peak, this album was intended to resuscitate her career. On paper, it seemed like a good idea. Maerz’s producer even managed to enlist a famous jazz organist (Ingfried Hoffmann) to do the arranging. Hoffmann clearly put a lot of effort into the project, as the album is chock full of string accompaniments and horn flourishes, but he played it a bit too safe at a time when the naïve pop of the sixties was well past moribund.
There is very little stylistic variation evident here: every song was aimed straight for the charts and, correspondingly, all adhere to a strict bubblegum pop formula and feature very slick studio musicians and absolutely no surprises. However, the material is quite strong (it is Bacharach) and Marion was a charismatic and spunky little minx (kind of like a German Nancy Sinatra). I especially liked "Close To You," "I Say A Little Prayer," and "All Kinds Of People." Of course, all of the songs on this album will be recognizable to anyone with ears, given Bacharach’s pervasiveness.
However, when Maerz attempts emotional heft, such as in the climaxes of "Anyone Who Had A Heart" and "A House Is Not A Home," she can be squirm-inducingly melodramatic. Whether that is a problem or not is largely dependent on the listener’s mindset. I found myself grimacing, but they have quite a bit of camp value. If I were singing into a hairbrush in front of my mirror, I would probably skip right to those.
Frankly speaking, this is not a musical masterpiece. Sorry, Bureau B. However, it is quite fun and kitschy and definitely deserves a new life. This album’s downfall was solely due to its incredibly terrible timing. In the six years that elapsed since "Er Ist Weider Da," a seismic shift in teenage musical taste had taken place and she was now competing with Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, and the Beatles at their creative height. Marion, unfortunately for her career, had stayed the same.
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- Close To You (So Wie Ich)
- I Say A Little Prayer (Ich Wunsche Mir So Viel Von Dir)
- All Kinds Of People (Auf Dieser Erde)
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The disc opens with low synth murmurs and cavernous swathes of airy atmosphere. It is a dingy environment to be sure, but one which does a fantastic job of setting the mineshaft mode of the rest of the work as it transports itself downward. McGrail's guitar rings slowly emerge, spreading outward to further widen the vast spaces that Marsden's repeated bass tones continue to conjure.
The work's greatest strength lies in both the sheer quantity of its length and in the unit's monolithic pacing. Momentary rises in density give some indication as to the duo's potential for claustrophobic sludge, but Slomo clearly prefer a slower and more spatial atmospheric exploration. Everything here has a certain tangibility to it, a physical weight.
Despite its apparent stillness, the piece does grow though. Slowly sprawling across its length are motives of movement that recur and reshape, whether they are as slight and momentary as the twanging of a guitar or as continuously subtle as the crackling backdrop. Its changes are then based more on its vertical qualities—the various tonal configurations of whatever sounds are present at that time—than its horizontal progression. Even as momentum builds with an extended guitar note and the increasing rapidity of a bubbling synthesizer, the duo never allows for any sense of emotive release or cathartic climax. Rather these moments arrive, build, and then settle back into the whole. It seems "the bog" will let nothing escape its grasp.
After the work finishes, having surveyed all corners of its static world before slinking back to a wall of hiss, Cope enters to recite his poem, "Land." Like a reading out of Beowulf, Cope exclaims with apocalyptic sorrow: "Cast down to the bogart, thou. / The highest to the highest of the low, / Cast into the bog art though, / Distinct, most noble, sad necessity." It's hardly a happy ending, but after the last 65 minutes it's good to hear another person's voice. Which isn't to say that this isn't a beautifully constructed and detailed achievement; it absolutely is. Just don't expect a parade.
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Music like this can be hallucinatory, and while the sounds of “#1” left me with a feeling of vertigo that I was afraid would not go away, as a side effect it was minimal. The first lengthy song, close to 22 minutes, is built on the bedrock of a long sustained tone that pricked at the back my skull. A distorted guitar soon joins in and its strings sound frayed. Blistering on the first listen, its heavy wall of layered fuzz was like an itchy sweater only put on during winter's coldest days; at first it is uncomfortable and the need to scratch soon follows. Strings of Consciousness' oscillating lines of noise are very warm, crackling with subtlety and hidden nuances.
Inside the push and pull of wind rushing through an accordion I can hear the explosion of air on a rocket ship as the fuel is ignited. Solar flares must have interfered with the recording equipment; I can hear them as heavy noise squalls bleeding through the speakers. Somehow the background radiation of the universe has been made audible. Tossed about on the rocking waves of this cosmic ocean, I am eventually pulled in beyond the event horizon. The music keys me into a superstring theory of everything, and I am born into a new parallel world.
While “#1” is beautiful in the way that it makes my nerve endings feel burned raw, “#2” by comparison has a more palliative effect. On this track the accordion has a more pronounced presence, as I follow its echoes and get lost in labyrinthine ruins of sound. Holographic guitars emerge from hidden grottoes, electronic bleeps twitter and swarm before being overtaken by deftly flanged, panning chords. Chains rattle, riding in over the high metallic drone of a Tibetan singing bowl. Percussive clangs dance with raucous abandon before things settle down, all carried in on a balmy Mediterranean breeze. I know I will be returning to the landscapes conjured in this 18 minute song again and again. It was my favorite of the two. By the end of the record I feel purged and uplifted, as if I had passed through a storm while making a pilgrimage to the temple of sound.
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The album opens with "Alive in the Sea of Information," an eight minute excursion which fits snuggly into Emeralds’ previous oeuvre. The trio is unflinching in their alliance with the forms of '70s synth explorers like Cluster and Klaus Schulze, and they display their fine capabilities in that realm here as the soft ringing of Hauschildt's Moog gradually thickens with Elliott's Korg MS-10 bass tones. The liner notes state that "this recording is a collection of improvised songs recorded live to tape 2007-2008," an important indicator as to the group's process and one which is on fine display here. Each line undulates along in a soupy mix of analog psychedelia that captures perfectly the group's capability for spontaneous improvisational composition. As long vocal drones are spread across the weighty synth backdrop it does become a song of sorts, exploring its parts with a careful and confident hand
One of the paradoxes surrounding Emeralds is their close-knit affiliation with the underground noise scene. Despite the high-fidelity and overt beauty often explored on their works, the unit has continued to sharpen their abilities in the tape, vinyl and CD-R culture of labels such as Fag Tapes, Ecstatic Peace and their own Wagon and Gneiss Things imprints. This influence is readily apparent on "Damaged Kids," which starts off with synthesizer gestures that bubble about among thick and mossy tones, sounding more like John Olson's remixes of Elliott's solo work than the traditionally vibrant Emeralds sound. As it builds however, it meshes into a series of mobile synth gestures that are carried along by McGuire's guitar pulse before lightening its load in favor of crystalline drops of guitar tone and synthesized garble that drift off into a quickly pulsing end. Given that the group takes 15 minutes for the piece, it is still surprising how frequently they are able to smoothly transition from one mode to another.
"Up in the Air" is, as its title suggests, a lofty affair that serves as a brief intermission in the album. It is the most overtly gentle work on the disc, providing a respite before the next two tracks make up the last half of the album. "Living Room," the longest piece here, begins with an organ-like line that recalls Terry Riley or La Monte Young's "The Well-Tuned Piano" more than Neu! or Tangerine Dream. McGuire's guitar lends a church bell quality to the work as it drifts toward a starker, more static area. The trio's abilities as a whole are on display, with each member circumventing the whole with well placed and unselfish playing far beyond the maturity of most musicians in their early-twenties. Which isn't to quantify Emeralds' talents in terms of their age; these improvisations would be impressive for anyone. The proximity of their work to synthesizer legends of the past serves as testament to this. Never mere impersonators, the group manages to find its own worlds of sound through the means of decades past, but with the ears of today.
The closing "Disappearing Ink" slides across the speakers with monolithic grace as it unwraps its own sonic world. McGuire's guitar tones stand out in their lulling rhythms, staying warm without ever slipping into post-rock wankery. As the piece evolves, it emerges as a wall of vaporous, spectral beauty, as rich as an Eno instrumental with the weight of Popul Vuh or Ash Ra Tempel's best work.
In interviews, Emeralds often speak of the importance of volume in their music. To see the group live is to understand the true capacity of their music to physically manifest itself. Too often their albums are heard with this crucial factor lacking. For the complete experience, What Happened is a fine example. Each song materializes as it is meant to while Elliott, Hauschildt and McGuire, chisels in hand, continue in shaping the walls of sound before them.
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K has a booming voice, an impressive vocabulary, and a commanding presence. His delivery is a bit of an acquired taste, however. At times he sounds far more like a very irate poet than an MC (I warmed to it though). I also found his lyrics to be needlessly abstruse at first (“Ewoks are just mechanized tumbleweeds”?), but the lyric sheet revealed that almost everything makes perfect sense (except the sci-fi stream-of-consciousness of "Cell-Shaded/Daydreams/Nightmares", which probably would only make sense to Kool Keith). Generally, K is a damn inventive and clever lyricist and avoids nearly all traditional hip-hop cliches.
The fact that he is a big, loud, angry guy is also quite an asset, as indie rap is often too non-threatening, introspective, and over-intellectual for my taste. He usually only missteps when he attempts to be confessional or when he attempts a refrain; radio-friendly songcraft is not his strength. I’m not sure if he needs to become better at structuring songs or needs to abandon structure altogether. The tracks that work best seem like Beck handed K a tape and said “here’s an amazing beat, just go crazy over it for two minutes.”
Thavius is nearly a mixed blessing, as he comes extremely close to decisively upstaging K on his own album (especially during the first two tracks). "400 on the BPM" opens the album with an absolutely crushing industrial crunch coupled with an elephantine primal roar. Then "Before the Session" follows, which sounds like a spaced-out IDM remix of Ministry’s "Dream Song." If the album ended there, it would be perfect. Those two tracks hit like a truck and show that these two at their best can hold their own against anyone in hip-hop today.
As for the rest of the album…well, it’s pretty good. However, Beck never recaptures that early intensity and fades into the background a bit. Not completely, of course: the sci-fi samples in "Marathon Man" and the combination of spectral backing vocals and minor key keyboards in "Man or Machine" are quite impressive. K is, for the most part, consistently inventive and impassioned on the mic and all of the guest MCs turn in strong performances. However, the individual components never really achieve the synergy of the first two tracks for the duration of an entire song again. That said, Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow is packed with some great moments, if not great songs.
Beck and K have all the tools needed for becoming a dominant force and it would be unfortunate if they didn't collaborate further. I just hope they stay fixated on being bludgeoning and futuristic as the occasional choruses and anthemic electric guitars have me worried. That stuff should be left to those who are less talented and idiosyncratic.
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