Buckethead

The Day of the Robot (Sub Meta)
by Lex Marburger

You want to talk about guitar gods? Put away your “Wing-wee” albums, and have a listen to what a man in a white mask with a bucket of fried chicken on his head can do. Enigmatic, even for the Bay Area, Buckethead has consistently shown himself to be a leader in innovation, be it his ever-identifiable atonal shred technique, or simple fashion tips. Always willing to explore new areas of music, the first track on The Day Of The Robot (Sub Meta) shows exactly how far-out he’s gotten. Called “Destroyer,” it’s in three parts. After a short ambient intro, he bursts in with an insanely driving beat, metal from the depths of delirium, with breaks of dissonant guitar sweeps creating mayhem in the aisles. That segues into a thudding avant-rock stomp groove, with a soft melodic bridge. Of course, Buckethead (no one actually knows his name) uses a large part of this section to solo, but since it’s Buckethead, it really doesn’t matter. I like to hear him play. He’s got a weird sensibility to his madness, a way of playing that’s actually interesting to listen to. He goes all the way out, playing in not only neighboring keys, but in keys that are across town, in the next zip code. Finally, the third section oozes into a dub, Bill Laswell creating his low-end genius while Buckethead develops atmospheres and moonscapes to support the foundation bass. That’s just the first song. On the next few, Buckethead collaborates with Laswell and UK Jungle DJ Ninj, adding a crunch to the standard “Bass-and-Drums” mix. On “Flying Guillotine,” as the wild beats scatter around the pulsing bass, he enters not-so-subtly in places, dropping in metal chunks of rhythm, and then bursting into an outer space solo that soon advances (decays?) into atonal meandering that ends up back at the chugging rhythms. On “Quantum Crash” he adds Cecil Taylor-type piano, random clusters of notes throwing off any sense of the expected, and enters a land of uncertainty. The next few are ambient-like, save for short manic bursts of rhythmic activity. The Day Of The Robot proves once again that genius is only possible through a melding of genres, and that it doesn’t hurt to make fashion statements with buckets of fried chicken.