Echo
(Full Contact/Fifth Column)
by Lex Marburger
If you ever wanted a reasonably full understanding of what the “alternative” label means to Electro bands, Echo comes pretty damn close. Intent on being an overview of Fifth Colvmn’s sister label Full Contact, Echo does its best to showcase the best music they’ve got. It all begins with Three Tragic Myths’ “Blossom,” which begins as a laid-back Dub electric version of Spiritualized or a slower digitized Dandy Warhols tune (mixed with some stilted Kraftwerk-ish “Metal on Metal” elements), and gently fades out. On the next track, Meacham & P.O.D. starts “Eden (Wendy’s Song)” as just another techno tune before branching off into schizophrenic synth modulations, breakbeats, and a high-pitched drone made up of a single note sped up so fast it becomes a seamless tone. That segués directly into the slow funk groove of the “Funky Drummer” with some Goa flavor, seasoned with a few gospel shouts and some alien contact sounds. The whole 8+ minute song ends with a blending of the first two sections, focusing more on the dance element, something I personally could have done without. Division #9 holds it low and steady with “Dub Altar,” a synthed-out bottom-end groove that always threatens to get out of control, drums wanting desperately to go into the Jungle, only to be leashed back in by the bass line, low and steady. Problematically, they seem to get lured into the “kick-drum-stays-on-the-four-beat-pulse” too, instantly reducing the complexities to inanities. Well, maybe not inanities, but certainly nothing especially special.
If you ever wondered what a simple pop ballad would sound like from five miles above the Earth, “Surya” by Perceptual Outer Dimensions is the way to go. A mild chord progression played on turbulent strings makes up the intro, and then the addition of both a trip-hop beat and some dancey computer manipulations make a tune that’s both recognizable and slightly new at the same time. The middle section explores the realm of texture while keeping the same progression (though few would recognize it as such). Zia (home town, uh, faves) contribute an industrial/dark electro tune called “Space-Time,” with great drums and some cool textures over the top. As a filmscoring project, it works amazingly well (just turn down the sound on the TV while playing this track, and you’ll see Family Ties turn into a horror movie [if it wasn’t already]), but as a piece of music in itself it misses the mark – without having enough focus to be a typical “song,” and with too many rhythm elements to be “ambient.” Apraxia, with “Hypnotize,” heads for the land of ambient techno, or something like that (I keep getting these genres mixed up. I think I need a handbook or something). They reach their goal, stopping along the way into some, I dunno, “Trip-Dub,” or something. The stuff’s being invented too fast to put a handle on it. Starting with the beat from Kraftwerk’s “Trans Europe Express,” Shinjuku Filth create a dark dance sound that seems like a raver’s nightmare. Artificial thunder scrapes along the background, while disturbing synth sweeps accompany that damn techno beat, although it’s not so bad this time around. LAShTAL goes for the ambient thing even more in “The Fall” than Apraxia did, and gets deeper into pure sound, even while sticking to a constant, recognizable tempo. True to their Morphine spirit (not the band, stupid!), C17H19NO3 give a deep, dark, silence-filled “Passion Vessel,” perfectly suited for brooding, evil nights alone with a dozen black candles and a knife…
“Out From Under” is a cool little piece from Ipecac Loop, a skittering beat and simplistic bass line struggling to support a manic keyboard over the top, trying to push the beat ahead of itself. The mood comes out, widening the possibility for creative thought, urging the music to become more than it is. In fact, if you focus hard enough, it becomes just that. There’s something vaguely creepy about Self Organizing System. Their drum loop to “Pole” is a high-frequency tapping, which is blended with some altered wordless vocal lines, and then treated with all sorts of echo delays. It’s the sort of thing that you’d find in a psychosis fever dream, especially when the whole thing shifts back and forth between a faint demented remembrance of a lullaby, and then jolts into a hyperkinetic drum sequence, out of sync with the rest of the track. And then the initial track goes out of sequence with itself, nothing stable but the weeping violin and the ghostly vocals (still wordless). Alright, it’s more than “vaguely creepy,” it’s downright disturbing. I like it. Black Rain start out their track “Night City Ambient” with the sound of rainfall, but quickly move into metal scraping noises with some deep low tones, trying to be as spooky as they can, but too many Wes Craven movies have cured me of that melodramatic tactic. Chemlab grace us with the final track, “Pink,” and go for some poetry. Effective? I dunno, I ain’t no poet. She sounds pretty sincere, though, and the beatnik-on-PCP piano and sound effects behind her are pretty cool, so I guess it works. Maybe I should get our poetry guy in here on this…
Nah.
