Analogue
AAD
»
Analogue
AAD
Sonic Bubblegum, 1996
RiYL: Sonic Youth, Tortoise, Gastr Del Sol, Dianogah, Windsor For The Derby |
The craze was afoot. And before you knew it, there were more instrumental and oddball albums flooding the indie landscape than ever before. Some of the better early "post rock" albums remain obscurities of this time frame, and none are better (and sadly, as criminally under-heard) than AAD, Analogue's first album. If a listener wanted a 50-minute primer in what we listeners called "post rock" in the '90s, AAD would serve as the musical answer. Without submitting to cliches and bringing forth a stunning level of creativity for a heretofore unknown band, Analogue managed to epitomize the entire spirit of forward-looking music in one disc.
The cryptic nature of AAD only makes it a more intriguing listening experience. For one thing, band members are identified by last name only. For another, the song titles don't seem to match (there are 14 tracks on the album, but only 12 or 13, depending on your definition, listed in the liner notes). There's a suite entitled "Cricket Trilogy," but it only has two parts. This lack of identifying marks makes AAD feel like the masterwork of some anonymous musical genius.
And masterwork it is, due primarily to its seamless flow. AAD is one of the most complete listening experiences of the "post rock" era, and one of the few albums of its kind that really warrants playing from start to finish every time. Taking its most obvious cues from Slint's intelligent dynamism, Tortoise's emphasis on the low-end of the tonal spectrum and Sonic Youth's mystic guitar tunings, the album works largely outside of instrumental convention.
A handful of the songs feature vocals, and these tend to be the more "traditional" tracks. "Mediocre Copy Of Some Genius' Work," marked by its distinctive lawnmower engine noise, soars on a synth-driven, major-key melody, stacking up nicely against any number of Pavement cuts. "Goofball" rides an ebullient bass line in its verses, morphing into a thicker chorus that narrates the joys of receiving a telegram. "Goofball" is also one of the many tracks on AAD that probably inspired the next-wave of instrumentalists, bearing particular resemblance to the tracks with vocals on Dianogah's 1997 album In Search Of Real Insight.
Several songs use vocals as a distracting force, somewhat in the vein of Gastr Del Sol's less direct material. The first part of "Cricket Trilogy" sports a processed voice that seems jammed in the absolute rear of the mix, speaking about nothing in particular. The barely audible murmurings in "Ssssh." feature two separate dialogues in each side of the mix, the musical equivalent of a waking dream.
The instrumental tracks on AAD are greater than the sum of their constituent parts. The band's attention to detail sees to this, with just the right fuzz and amp noise on the detuned guitars and the unobtrusive presence of triangle, glockenspiel, and keyboards. Opener "As Seen From The Bottom Of The Colorado River" is all of it in a nutshell, repeating a simple dropped-D guitar lead until it eventually congeals into an opiate-thick ooze of tone in the aptly-titled "View From Space." As tones ring like alert bells and are then stretched into a psychedelic haze, "Damn Big" kicks in with its prominent drum beat and alternately guitar and bass-driven, Sonic Youth-tinged melody. It's difficult to think of musical accompaniment for emotions like "awe," (just one of the feelings that one gets when confronted with space and severe height imagery) but this suite comes as close as any.
AAD concludes with its more abstract offerings, including the "Cricket Trilogy" and a 12-minute track called "Palindrone." Minimalist-influenced repetition takes hold more often than not, as riffs are tested out, played for minutes, discarded and, if they're lucky, introduced again. On "Palindrone," gusts of guitar noise and treated drum beats float in and out, steadied only by the constant "shwip" noise of a record being spun back on itself.
This record is the true diamond in the "post rock" rough, a document of a then-fresh substrata of indie music that is brilliant in both scope and composition.
JONATHAN COHEN | Jonathan Cohen co-created Nude As The News with his Indiana University mates Troy Carpenter and Ben French. When not traversing the globe for business and pleasure, he holds down the fort as a senior editor for Billboard in New York. Stop him and he just may ask, "what for lunch?"