Polyglon Window - Surfing On Sine Waves

 Polyglon Window - Surfing On Sine Waves (Warp, 11th January 1993)

Something that more often than not barely registered for me with the intensity and precision that I wished for. Which will happen eventually if you blindly pick 75 records for a deep dive … it just sucks that it came so soon and with an artist I genuinely like. Overfamiliarity somewhat becomes the issue here. After about five hours of early Richard David James (Aphex Twin, Polyglon Window, AFX among others) the pleasant shock that the mixing and the writing had on my contemporary EDM-battled brain fades away. 

This is in many ways still the IDM I am familiar with and like. The way the drums circle through the mix with the bass drum upfront and the hi-hats softly screeching or clicking along. One central, often melancholic melody, which then shifts into or is layered upon a more aggressive beat. It lacks the abrasiveness of his future releases, bending the dance floor to a very mellow and sleepy idea of chaos (»Supremacy II«). My favorite moments are when James gives the record over to the acid belching and quaking of the legendary Roland TB-303 on »UT1-Dot«, »Untitled« and »Quixote«. I feel a deep nostalgia for the potential of technology to shape the cultural understanding of what sounds are possible. Back then you solved this on the dance floor, now you have to stand in museums and galleries and listen to stones or other assimilations of nature.

I likewise always liked Derrida’s idea of différance when writing and reading about electronic music. The belief that each sign in a system is not defined by its inherent value but by the difference to those surrounding it, a lingering and irrefutable absence. That their meaning is constituted in conversation to each other, each filling in where the other is fading away from the mix. The beat as a placeholder for all the sounds of the track, all the sounds of the world really, activating them in a programmed coordination to the best of their potential. Too often they exist in isolation here. The boomy, hard hitting Gabber infused bass drum on »Quoth« registers, but has nothing to play off of compared to the sharp and damp snare drum on »If It Really Is Me« which pairs nicely with the thin piano melody. But even when successful we circle back to the lingering overfamiliarity, or the technological boundaries of his sound at that particular moment in time. Surfing On Sine Waves.

All stills taken from Jonathan Schwartz's The Crack-Up. 

Uncle Tupelo - Anodyne

Uncle Tupelo - Anodyne (Sire, 5th October 1993)

One of the driving interests for this project is an interest in the most famous corners of the early 90s alternative scene. This bears a little explanation: I know most of these bands by name or singles but never felt the need to invest in something which had so little to lose or gain. I mean this less in a structural way (e.g. ‘selling out’) than sonically. From my vantage point, 90s hardcore and the circumstances in which it was produced, create a far more interesting sound than most alternative acts which sounded too clean, too ‘made’. Yet as this project and their presence indicates, this opinion has shifted in the years since: The distinction still holds but I simply like to think about how artists navigate commercial spaces or cross these thresholds and how they sound while doing so. 

I’m leading with this to make somewhat credible that I had heard about Uncle Tupelo but didn’t know that it was the project of Jeff Tweedy and Jay Farrar before there was Wilco or Son Volt. My general beef with alternative country is that it too often masqueraded alt-rock as country, paying little to no interest in the sound of country. Which brings us to Anodyne, a record which expresses this mindset as good as any. After it was completed, Farrar announced that he was leaving the band (»Working in the halls of shame / Lay it down in full view / Lay it down«) after his relationship with Tweedy had soured. A split you can already feel on the record: On Anodyne, Jay Farrar mostly writes country songs, while Jeff Tweedy tries on rock songs. There are two good songs of Tweedy on the record: »Acuff-Rose« a song written for and with the fiddle and »No Sense In Lovin’« in which he lets the pedal steel take center stage. Mostly though Tweedy writes catchy and clever riffs (»We Been Had«, »The Long Cut«). It is most irritating on »New Madrid«, where his presence overpowers the banjo and pushes it even further back in the mix.

If the liner notes can be trusted this was also the first time since their debut that the band worked with a pedal steel guitar, here played by The Chicks’ Lloyd Maines. Beware the puritan but few things sound as country to me as pedal steel and Ferrar knows it. A pedal steel guitar allows the player to modulate the chords via pedal and knee levers, allowing for smooth transitions within the scale. It demands a very precise play but rewards one with the most expressive and versatile sound. On »Anodyne«, Maines first creates a wailing, outdrawn howl, before going into a joyous riff. It’s a gorgeous, gorgeous song. Ferrar gives Maines the space, sings around him as on »Fifteen Keys«. There’s an understanding here of how to engage with country, how to write for its specific sound which is simply not there in Tweedy’s cuts and would vanish completely on early Wilco.

Moss Icon - Liburnum Wits End Liberation Fly

Moss Icon - Lyburnum Wits End Liberation Fly (Vermiform, January 1993)

Back in the 80s, the scene grew weary of the clear-cut hardcore formula -- the sloganeering, the simplicity and ferocity of the riffs, the compact song structure -- and sought out new ways to liberate it from within. They expanded the sound by inviting more melody, more movement within the songs, more introspection. Moss Icon hail from Annapolis, MD, just near enough Washington, DC to get grouped into the emerging post-hardcore scene albeit without getting signed by Dischord. Both of their recorded LPs Lyburnum Wits End Liberation Fly (1993) and It Disappears (1994) were released after they disbanded in ‘91. The band played several reunion shows and in 2012 saw their complete discography reissued by Temporary Residence Limited but until now Moss Icon never released new music. 

I love how intricate Lyburnum … sounds. »Mirror« opens with Tonie Joy’s sharp, quickly strum power chords which are met by Monica DiGialleonardo’s warm, wavy bass line before they overpower them. Jonathan Vance comes in with a vocal delivery which stutters through its melody, before it breaks out into a clear, powerful shout at the end of the song. Throughout the record, Vance isn’t shy from letting his voice slip in the background of the mix, clear and tangible and on beat, but content in thinking along. The narrator is caught up in its own consciousness, breaking through with the gospel once one of his realizations is met by the divine or whatever comes in its place. “It was only a misunderstanding of words … that doesn’t mean that it was not good.” || “Would you talk to me as if I could be real to you?” 

             

Throughout the album, the prominence of the bass is striking. Whatever kinship one presumes to Joy Division starts here. In the closer »Happy (Unbound Glory)« DiGialleonardo first mirrors and then takes over the riff from Joy, while his guitar distorts into a haunting reverb. They circle each other for a while, negotiating a truce, before the whole band comes back full force in the final twenty seconds. The whole album just accumulates these type of details. A proto-emo provocation: well into »Locket«, Marcus Laurence fills in an in-your-face snare salvo leading into Vance delivering the song with a scream and a chorus. The opening acoustic guitar on »Divinity Cove« is soon numbed by the riffing yet the pain remains. On »Kick The Can«, Vance gives fully over to Joy whose riffs switch from suspended yearning to a triumphant howl, punctuated by some forlorn cymbal hits.  It all builds to »Lyburnum – Wit’s End (Liberation Fly)« in which space is shared equally, each member given its moment on the first half, before the band emerges as a full unit. It’s not an epic, but a Kenneth Anger like evocation. Vance sings the song like he would deliver a sermon, never shifting his delivery but slowly building presence. The good with the evil. The loud with the quiet. All the beauty and the bloodshed. “Let us take up our hymn books and sing” || “Now is never!”