Pages

12/10/2016

The Fucked Up Beat – Researches Ghostwaves and the Midnight Mysteries of Rhode Island (2016)


  • Avant-garde
  • Sampledelic 
  • Plunderphonics 
  • Experimentalism 
  • Leftfield
  • Breaks
  • Latin music 
  • Electronic music 
  • Hauntology 
  • Mood music
  • Trip-hop 
  • Downtempo 
  • Psychedelic

Comment: it is always great pleasure to meet with Brett Zehner and Eddie Palmer's new works and it is permitted at least twice a year. Musically their task has been to reflect upon some conspiracy theories mostly related to extraterrestrial beings and unknown flying objects. And aesthetically it could be described – always different always the same. Mammoth (a 48-minute monolith), one of the duo's albums released in 2016 was named very "indifferently" in comparison to the New York-based duo's previous works and also musically it involved new tendencies and patterns additionally to the already known ones (haunting cadences, buried speech transmissions, Latin music coloured timbres in an old-fashioned way, intriguing sample snippets). More profoundly, low and austere bass rhythms used to move on in an unstable yet elegant way therefore showcasing more experimental and minimal approach in comparison to their previous works. The recent 10-track outing seems to run more in a previous vein because of consisting of the samples of desperate accusations due to the government of hiding an information, for instance. These fabulous speech samples are accompanied by sharply soul-scratching, highly longing Latin oldies and loosely throbbing rhythms, and gleaming electronic ghosts. Additionally, one can hear tanpura drones, brass outbursts and manually played drums. The soundscape of the issue is highly dynamic, ghastly volatile and at the same time providing many parallel lines and notches. There are even represented some moments which come quite nearby to danceable music (at The Rouge Terror of Narragansett Bay/ Parks At Night Are Always Dangerous). Indeed, the song titles of the project deserve to be focused on additionally. In a word, I could not resist to the appeal of The Fucked Up Beat. Why should I do it at all? Let's go tripping back to the past because the right answer is this release is time machine. Every wave is new until it breaks even if it has been ancient and dust-eaten before (paraphrasing Neil Young – Rap id Tran sit). Similarly to Mammoth it is an excellent issue from the year of 2016. The more you listen to it the more you are getting lost within, the more you are getting out of here. By the way, recently they issued a brand new one, called Records Vanishing Crop Circles and Occult Rituals in the Future Age of Paranoia.