Empires And Dance continued the trend towards a more austere electronic form of music. The lush textures of Real to Real Cacophony have turned frigid and glacial, depicting an endless travel in a pan-european metropolis, lost between past world-wars, an upcoming cyber age, and the paranoia of the cold-war era, a mosaic represented by the dance ritual "I Travel", the decadent hymns "Today I Died Again" and "This Fear Of Gods", the robotic deafening funk "Celebrate", the oriental techno "Capital City", and the nightmarish cyclones "Constantinople Line" and "Twist/Run/Repulsion".
Perhaps more original were "Kant-Kino" (a national anthem for a future empire in disarray) and "Room" (a feverish voodoo techno ceremony).
An expressionist record, second part in their European trilogy (along with Real to Real Cacophony and Sons and Fascination), torn between a vague past (the symphonic, cosmopolitan, exotic elements) and an uncertain future (the electronic arrangements, the cyber-age, the cold war threat); a chapter in the history of a civilization in crisis, which suffocates the individual. Get it here.
The symphonic splendour of "Silence, Sea And Sky" opens this sophomore Chameleons effort in style: it's multi-layered orchestral wash "swimming" in reverberation and creating a feeling of celestial wonder. This symphonic tapestry permeates the background of "Perfume Garden", a more lyrical version of their pompous post-punk, articulate and melodically strong. With a less spectacular melody, "Intrigue In Tangiers" fares less well, despite the bombast involved in the orotund vocals of Mark Burgess, and the heavy-weight epic arrangements. In all honesty, the stilted nature of their music reflects what U2 were doing at the time in The Unforgettable Fire.
Incorporating this grandiloquent symphonic and mildly psychedelic ethereal framework in a more powerful post-punk track such as "Return Of The Roughnecks", the result is good, but not spectacular. In "Singing Rule Britannia", the bombast is effectively counteracted by a sad melody in the chorus. Alas, the recipe gets a bit same-y by "On The Beach". The more traditional "Looking Inwardly" feels much better. They return to the gloom-rock in "Home Is Where The Heart Is", the symphonic pomp this time backing a feeling of paranoia and working more efficiently, though no less declamatory. After all this bombast, the more straightforward lyricism of "P.S. Goodbye" comes as a breath of fresh air.
Overall, The Chameleons overstate their case a bit too much, which results in an uneven album, better balanced than the debut, but without majestic highlights such as "Monkeyland" and "Second Skin". Get it here.
Desk Trickery displayed a jam-rock that was tribal, ethnic and almost industrial ("Sparkling Deadheadz"), flirting with the psychedelic ballad, but still chilling and unsettling ("Grill Out Time"), packing the odd pop melody before veering into noisy abstraction ("Free Festival Of The Stonebridge"), pale, ceremonial and almost delirious ("Who Shot J.R."), and also revisiting NEU's motorik beat and "Sister Ray's" soaring pandemonium. Get it here.
Here the Banshees find the middle point between the litany and the epileptic fit. "Spellbound", "Into the Light" and "Arabian Nights" have an airy psychedelic vibe, while "Halloween", "Monitor", "Sin In My Heart" and "Head Cut" are feverish voodoo ceremonies, augmented by excellent guitar and percussive work, as well as Siouxsie's vocal acrobatics. Between these two approaches, "Night Shift" and "Voodoo Dolly" combine the nocturnal, subliminal threat, with the spasms of the exorcism. You could say that this a refinement of the Join Hands program, but this line-up is more convincing in it's execution. Get it here.
The Fall are at their most disjointed in Grotesque and it sounds great. Detuned guitars, instruments out of sync, clanging drums add even more mayhem to an already cacophonous recipe. Also, new ways are found to express their hysteric ramblings, like the drone-folk "New Face In Hell", the intense martial plonking "C'n'C-S Mithering", the rockabilly/ country frenzy "Container Drivers", the almost industrial "Impression of J. Temperance", the sparse electric shocks of "In The Park", the anthemic "Gramme Friday" which is a masterpiece of elaborate metamorphoses (from dark-punk, to swing and dub basslines a la PiL, to folk guitars, to almost psych-rock, to freak-out vocals) etc. Get it here.
In the post-grunge (post-Hole), post-alternative (post-Garbage) and post-feminine (post-PJ Harvey) world, Queen Adreena's mainwoman Katie Jane Garside established a turbulent environment to be in, as shown in opener "Cold Fish", an angst-ridden pop anthem, unpegged by razor-sharp feedback. The twisted lounge "Soda Dreamer" followed, dreamy and haunted, while in "I Adore You" the violent thrusts of the guitar pushed further towards what was already a tense track. Katie Jane Garside occupied a dejected territory, delineated by "Yesterday's Hymn", a ghostly trip-hop comprised of her broken baby-doll delivery, male chanting vocals, and raspy loops. Then "Pretty Polly" started as a depressed dream-pop lullaby, but was later having feedback-laden rage-attacks.More eclectic, "Yemaya" resembled a post-grunge cabaret for lost little-girls in an adult hostile environment. "Madraykin" continued to occupy a desolate territory, in what was essentially a fading radio transmission of a post-alternative serenade. These schizophrenic alternations between manic depression and rage attacks continued in "X-ing Off The Days", whose cries of agony pierced the air in what was basically a supersonic litany. The mania retreated in "Hide From Time", the little girl lost covering herself in a cocoon of psychological fortress. Alas, it was not to be, the raging mania resurfaced in "Friday's Child". The album was displaying a borderline dual personality. All these rage attacks, resulted in the same lapse of positive energy, a vicious loop confirmed by the trip-post-blues "Sleepwalking". The closing "Weeds" didn't offer any ray of hope, essentially a lament for what was a vicious circle of emotional dysfunction. Get it here.
When dance-punk was a prevailing movement in the early 00's, and before the Liars decided they were an art-rock band, they gave one of the definitive records of the genre with They Threw Us All In A Trench. It started with "Grown Men Don't Fall In The River", introduced by typical slacker-rock plucking, but soon got a kick up the butt by turning to a manic Gang Of Four-like punk-funk exercise, though it's structure was anything but stable, a trait that was also evident in the quasi-free-form and quasi-rap "Mr. Your On Fire Mr.", reminiscent of the Beastie Boys at their best, before it embarked once again in a Gang Of Four-styled chorus. Then the irregular chanting and rhythming in "Loose Nuts On The Velandrome" veered into no-wave territory, reminding of the Teenage Jesus & The Jerks' shattering "Orphans". "Tumbling Walls Buried Me In The Debris With ESG" harked back to the Bush Tetras more broad punk-funk, albeit in modern post-everything production settings, and in the end embarking in a very effective dark-punk and punk-funk jamming, proving that the Liars were above all good musicians. In the meantime, industrial gurgling electronic noise enhanced the spazz framework in "Nothing Is Ever Lost Or Can Be Lost", one of their most angst ridden endeavors. The most impressive experiment was "This Dust Makes That Mud", whose fluid structure, led by tense synthesizer lines and agonizing thrumming shrieks, harked back to such cold-wave classics such as Joy Divisions' "I Remember Nothing" and the Talking Heads' "Overload", eventually leading to a nightmarish, psychedelic loop going on for 20 minutes, from where it seemed there was no exit. Get it here.
