Henry Cow/Slapp Happy - 'In Praise of Learning' (Red)

I have a lot of records; some would say 'too many', and I probably must concur, even though I find it hard to part with any. One sign that your accumulation is too vast is when you don't actually remember if you own a record or not. One of the many things I've enjoyed about doing this project over the past 8 years is realising these possessions and omissions, and now I've realised that I do NOT own a copy of Desperate Straights, the one credited to Slapp Happy/Henry Cow (in that precise order of credit, and which I guess came from the same sessions as this LP). I always thought of these two bands as having briefly merged for two albums, rather than merely 'having collaborated', and In Praise of Learning is probably the high point for both bands' careers, though I realise I said in the last post that Unrest was the best Henry Cow record. By now you should know to ignore my superlatives, anyway. But anyway, the distinct sensibilities of each band are perfect in combination, different enough to challenge and pull the musicians in new directions, but unified in their passions and penchant for adventure. This LP is credited to Henry Cow (except on the spine, where Slapp Happy gets some love), and this makes sense as this is much more of a Henry Cow album with Slapp Happy's spin, as opposed to Desperate Straights which is the other way around. Plus it has a sock on the cover, dyed red in case you had any fucking doubt about their politics. The opening cut, 'War', is the most explosive juxtaposition of the two ensembles, opening with Blegvad's voice briefly before Dagmar Krause (credited here by her first name over, a proto-Madonna if there ever was one) comes crashing in. This is the first Art Bears song for sure, with violent poetic imagery and rhyme soaring over a potent mix of musicians. Former Henry Cow member Geoff Leigh returns to guest and Mongezi Feza is also present; it's almost a pop song and a perfect introduction to 'Living In the Heart of the Beast'. This is Tim Hodgkinson's composition, and it's an epic number, taking up the rest of side 1 and moving through an absolute plethora of words, printed on the back sleeve like the polemic/essay it properly should be read as. This piece is hard to grasp, with its title the most memorable thing, but in its density lies many rewards. As it proceeds through several movements, it gradually takes on the role of the anthem, as if Henry Cow has figured out how to write aggressively political music that avoids cheap sensationalism or inconsistent wavering; indeed, 'Beast' finds its own footing by the end, where it comes marching to a conclusion over a what's probably the most conventional "progressive rock"-sounding moment on the record. Side two (as usual) has the free improvisations, though they are just the bread around 'Beautiful as the Moon - Terrible As an Army With Banners'. This sound is a bit more stripped down, with Greaves/Cutler locking into a plodding groove over which Frith's piano arpeggios perfectly complement Krause's rising and falling voice. I guess to some people her singing might be an acquired taste but I love it, and would buy any record of hers sound-unheard; I remember already gushing here about Babble and the Commuters EP, and this is another one of her greatest accomplishments. Her timbre is so uncompromising that it's a perfect match for Henry Cow, one of the most principled bands there ever was (to me, they approach Crass-like territory), and 'Beautiful as the Moon' finally releases in it's conclusion into a cadence that is actually catchy, probably the most hummable part of this record and of Henry Cow in general. The improv tracks on either side are both wonderful and I can only dream of what outtakes there must be; 'Beginning - The Long March' is a little punchier, but 'Morning Star' gets into some truly extended technique'z recalling eastern gong music as much as it resembles rock, jazz, or anything western, really. Cooper in particular shines here, especially over scraped guitar strings that occasionally sound like bowls of water rotating on a giant animal skin. The lyrics are printed on the back, which you really need to follow, and at the bottom is the (amazing) quote by John Grierson: 'Art is not a mirror - it is a hammer'. I find that as inspiring today as I did at 17, even if it feels like more of a struggle to believe it (or to implement it). I don't know much about the personal journeys of the Henry Cow people over the years, but they've at least managed to keep a public image that they have really lived this ethos without compromise. I'm not sure if any young musicians today listen to Henry Cow for inspiration, but they really should.

Godspeed You Black Emperor! ‎– 'Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven' (Constellation)

I love the unofficial abbreviation "Yr." for 'your" - thank Sonic Youth for that one - but according to the often-fallible discogs, the vinyl release of this spells out the word "Your" while the various CD issues use the "Yr.". The gatefold sleeve breaks down the movements of each side-long piece, in a very loose graphical score, so you can view this as a 19 track album if you want. I like the side-long approach; I personally think of my own records (the few that I have made) in those terms, one side at a time, as standalone pieces. 'Storm' is the first of the four; it begins with a 'classic' GYBE! sound, with a militaristic drumbeat behind a ringing mishmash of harmonies, like if Vibracathedral Orchestra met Bedhead or something. When cranked up loud (and my neighbours must really be enjoying the GYBE! phase of my record accumulation) you can hear all of the violins pushing against each other in the upper mids, making this feel like the sound of internal combustion. The overall 'Storm', being another twenty minutes of music in four parts, really feels like it ends after it's second movement, 'Gathering Storm'; then we get some field recordings of airport announcements and the lush 'Cancer Towers on Holy Road Hi-Way' which takes out the side with deep, ringing low piano chords, practically Well-Tuned in how they create spacious toneclouds. 'Static' is the name of side two and it opens with rotating electro-acoustic drones, before some neo-romantic violin takes over ('Atomic Clock') and here's an evangelical preacher overdubbed, in what's becoming a bit of a Godspeed You Black Emperor! cliché by this point. And you know the rest - guitars slowly noodle into place, the strings grow out of the ambience and take on a life of their own until the motion has gradually become more steady, until it's oceanic. But this doesn't crash into a epic riff-jam - instead 'World Police and Friendly Fire' takes centre stage, where plucked cello notes build a tense momentum. It's a good segue and throughout the rest of the side, this develops around that theme, with instruments coming and going, dense drones behind the melody, teasing us that it's not going to turn into a confident rock jam. But it does - and it's somewhat diminishing, a bunch of musicians playing in a groove, though more composed than a jam. A few of them are keeping a steady crashing drone going, some are focusing on the melodic riff, and the bass/drums hold things tight; it's post-Slint, post-rock as we called it back then, and it's only the buildup and release, buildup and release that keep it from becoming boring (even though we know where it's going all along). But it's not the end - there's an outro, a thick ambient drone that could be smack off the first Labradford album, with the title 'The Buildings They Are Sleeping Now'. And however you may feel about their ascendant indie rock parts, these electroacoustic bits take familiar sonography (bowed cymbals, oscillating drone strings, endlessly echoing roomspace) and somehow create something unique. At this halfway point I'll try to articulate my feelings about GYBE! circa the release of this record, because they seemed unstoppable, yet somehow sort of turned into furniture. All my college buddies were in awe of what they were doing, partially because it has all the art gestures (scrawled song titles, cryptic language, and the good sense to sit back and let the music tell the story) and partially because it's always impressive where this many people get together to make music without some major financial backing behind them. But I was starting to get a bit tired of it; for as enjoyable as this double LP is to listen to now, fifteen and one-half years later, I remember feeling rather disappointed by it all. Apart from the fourth side, it all felt repetitive. So I gave up on this band - I didn't listen to their followup, and when I heard they re-formed (or at least put out their first record in ten years) awhile back I wasn't really interested. I'm a fickle beast, or I was at age 20, but I did see them one last time, at a University-funded concert that worked for a band with mid-sized popularity: pretty good sound, films, and all were on display. They played the hits from Slow Riot  and I think some stuff from this album and probably a whole lot of improvisation - to be honest, the Morricone parts all sound pretty much the same after awhile so I don't really remember. But at some moment it really hit me - maybe when they played 'Moya' or maybe they even played the immortal 'BBF3' live - my memory is really hazy -- and I suddenly realised how fucking amazing and great this band really was. I mean, I was already a fan, a rabid one at first, then a subdued one (no doubt due to them no longer being my 'secret' and their rise in popularity, cause that's the 19 year old mentality), but I left that concert with a deep, deep appreciation. It was an appreciation that wasn't so much about their music, but one that extended someone to an overall idea of ideology. Because I realised, during this horrible time where George W. Bush had just stolen an election and global capitalism was running rampant (and this was pre-9/11 of course) that what Godspeed You Black Emperor! were doing was PUNK ROCK - though of course it didn't sound like the Germs or Crass or Naked Raygun even but rather it was a truly progressive idea of what 'punk' could be; what it could mean, if you want to care about such stupid ideologies. And I did, at least then, and was constantly looking for a way to reconcile that concept with something more progressive. So yeah, if I wanna dismiss them I'll just say they're soundtrack music but the truth is, these Nucks seemed committed to a vision, and I don't know anything about them (they stay pretty anonymous at least across these records) but at that moment, watching these ravaged grainy films that were so bleak and hopeless and full of rage and beauty at the same time - it all clicked with me. So yeah, back to the record - side three is called 'Sleep' and it starts off, well, sleepy (despite more spoken overlays). But the middle segment, 'Monheim', is more of the same yet somehow brighter - the drumming takes on a frantic, almost jazzy cadence, and a drone of higher pitch eventually takes over, the rest of the band fades out, and it turns into this repetitive texture with subtle xylophone tinkles before coming into another rock bit - the 'bringing it all back home' feel, not in the Dylan sense, but more like some kinda of journey. And then: the fourth side, one in which I remember a friend, one of the same friend with whom I drove two hours one night to see them on the Slow Riot tour, referred to as "just a bunch of noise" -- but this quarter of the record, the semi-titular 'Antennas to Heaven', is definitely a departure. It opens with some singing and strumming, and then moves through seven different segments that are far more textural and less concerned with making cohesive melodic riffs than anything to-date. There is an explosive, rocking musical passage in the middle with a bunch of slide guitar and a Hawaiian feel, but it's actually overshadowed by how the rest of the piece is some more loose and episodic than anything they've done before. I know I ranted and raved in the last post about how 'BBF3' is their masterpiece, and it really is, but this is probably my second favourite side of theirs. The Slow Riot EP really stands out against these other two records because those two compositions are tight, and this and the first album are collages formed into side-long compositions, for the most part. And it's a lot of music - listening to Lift Your Skinny Fists knocks out most of an evening, or at least it feels that way. So I'm content having stopped here; I'm left with three records that still feel special to me, even if I used up their inspiration-charges a long time ago. It might even be a nostalgia trip now, for the most part, but it's a sufficiently  soundtracked trip indeed.

Lindsay Cooper - 'Rags' (Arc)

Lindsay Cooper's one of the less famous members of Henry Cow, no doubt due to having fewer extracurricular activities than Frith and Cutler, etc. But she's pretty fucking integral to their sound, and her list of other projects is not a short one. This is all I really know about her solo work, unless you count Western Culture, which is pretty much dominated by her touch. So Rags comes as a unsurprisingly satisfying blast of RIO, which of course stands for Rock in Opposition, which was a stupid name given to a group of bands that came out of the Cow. There's actually nothing rock about Rags, which isn't surprising given that it's based around Cooper's bassoon, oboe, and other reed instruments, often overdubbed into very somber, beautiful harmonies (the 'Woman's Wrongs' tracks in particular). Rags is of course intensely political, based around the concept of sweatshops and labour exploitation, which a specific indication of the woman's role in such things. Of course this is drenched in that 70's British Marxism, which I can't get enough of. This inevitably means a Kurt Weill influence in the songs, and when they're sung (by either Sally Potter or Phil Minton) it is a wee bit instructional in nature. Potter, who I know mostly as a filmmaker, is stunningly beautiful when singing 'Prostitution Song', and can also bash out la française in '1848'. She overdubs with herself on the eerie 'Stitch Goes the Needle', and it's haunting in its simplicity. Frith and Cutler are here, of course, sometimes doing the slowly unfolding Henry Cow style which makes this feel very familiar. Frith's acoustic interlude on 'General Strike' is delicate and beautiful, which sets the emotional resonance for the whole album. 'The Charter' is like being in history class, but the 'Chartist Anthem' duet is a little more lively, ending with a segue into the intense 'Cholera'. 'The Song of the Shirt' appears to tie everything together, really transcending any agit-prop content and finding a rolling, almost pastoral beauty in it's rising and falling piano runs. These pages will show how influenced I am by these RIO things, even though I hate the term and find a lot of it to be too pedantic. Rags is actually really compelling, though it's influenced by nothing of its era (and 1980 had a lot of great stuff going on); it's interesting how these artists look to the earlier precedents of the 20th century as a basis for their radicalism; such musical gestures could be seen as reactionary were it not for the lyrical and cultural associations. I've always personally had a strong feeling that the innovations of today have to reflect the classics, even if by 'classics' I mean the anti-traditions of the post-war avant-garde, etc. So maybe that's why I spent my 20's seeking out late 70's political art-rock instead of the hits of my own era. My particular copy has some black piece of paper glued over one line of the liner notes, as if to correct or redact something; I'm tempted to peel it back, but the 30 year old glue will surely rip up the record sleeve and I'm too prissy for that. Anyone else want to tell me what it says?

Eugene Chadbourne - 'Country Music in the World of Islam' (Fundamental)

This is a collaboration between Chadbourne, the Sun City Girls and Elliot Sharp -- and you could probably include Matt Groening in there too, as Akbar and Jeff are spilling all over this record. As a band, well, Chadbourne and Sun City Girls work together brilliantly. Who else is so attuned to Chadbourne's rambling sensibility? And the title is apt for describing the contents. The songs blend together into two side-long suites, much like his performance style. I saw Chadbourne live once, but on record I don't have to endure the rather brutal odor that emanated from the stage. If only I could have seen this lineup! Rick Bishops's guitar playing is great with Chadbourne's style, and the goofy songs fit right in with the Dante's Disneyland mentality. I actually rate this over all those great Shockabilly records, maybe cause I like things sharp and not so echoey. Not that this record will be that much of a departure for Shockabilly fans. This is 1990, made nine years into the Reagan revolution, and understandably the songs burst with batshit insane conspiracy theories, social commentary on 80s issues, and timeless cleverness like 'Big John Loves His Dick'. 'Castro's Surgery is a Mystery' is maybe the pinnacle of this madness, a good dose of Horse Cock Phepner-style lyrical musings overlaid with the most sinister (yet stupid) sampled voice. You can't go too far into a Chadbourne record without hearing some cover versions, so you get Gram Parsons 'Luxury Liner', 'I Wouldn't Live in New York City' by Buck Owens, and the jazz standard 'I Cover the Waterfront'. The latter is done in a dirgy 80s' indie rock way, overlaid with braying farmyard animals, obtuse keyboard interference and several overdubbed layers of Chadbourne arguing with himself. And every once in awhile a really sweet harmony is reached with Charles Gocher, and some bittersweet sentimentality leaks through (despite the radio voice talking overtop). All throughout the record, of course, there's plucking and scrambling galore - banjo in particular works well with the usual Bishopisms. Everyone has a strong free improv sensibility that's really unique when pushed against these bouncy, brightly delivered songs. The middle of the record gets into more ballady tunes, with 'I'm Not You' and 'He Was a Boy' taking the humour down a notch; the band really gets cooking at the end of 'Boy' and Gocher in particular responds well and holds things just on the verge of pure chaos. 'Hippies and Cops' has a real alternarock edge not just because of the conflict described in the lyrics, but due to the deep fuzz guitars and basses. They're mixed low but it's still pleasantly tongue in cheek - 'The List is Too Long' gets into more metal-influenced rock with noodly solos that are probably Chadbourne, but it's actually hard to tell. I'm reminded of late 80s SST experimentalists, and the rock is brought back as an intro to the last tune, 'Don't Burn the Flag, Let's Burn the Bush'. Certainly flag-burning was all the rage in 1990 and the topical nature of this is not lost on me, but who knew what would happen a decade later in American politics! I'm sorry this wasn't revived for the dark part of the 00s, because when you sing 'The president oughta be in jail' it feels even more relevant when applied to the son. Though this is an unusually straightforward tune for Chadbourne it's charming, my own political sympathies notwithstanding - you can only imagine a frustrated 80s Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg (RIP, by the way!) happy to see some flame still burning.

Camberwell Now - 'The Ghost Trade' (Ink)

This is the second time I've journeyed through these six songs in the past week (see the Glass Mastered Cinderblock review of the discography CD) but I ain't complaining. I love owning this on vinyl even though the sound gets noticeably muffled towards the end of each side -- my turntable suddenly out of alignment or a bad mastering job? I rarely prefer the sound of a CD but this might be one case where the LP fails. It's most audible in 'Wheat Futures', where the sibilance of Hayward's croaking is a bit too piercing. I thought vinyl was supposed to have better low-end? Maybe Ink Records didn't have much of a budget for a mastering engineer. Actually the real reason is that I tend to jump around to the faster, more aggressive parts of this album, and when I have the turntable going, it skips when I hit the floor. What haven't I already said? Did I rave about the kazoo part in 'The Ghost Trade'? This is one part where the dirty vinyl sound is preferable, cause who doesn't like a fuzzy kazoo? There's some tape manipulations transitioning from the kazoo breakdown into the xylophone coda and it's just the right amount of damage to lay over a tune without totally disrupting the flow. But it all comes back to 'Working Nights', where the bassline is like a woodpecker beating against a shopping mall made of granite. The power of the songwriting here is the way the speeds shift; Camberwell Now mastered this "suddenly, we'll shift from warp speed to half-speed" thing, in a way that This Heat never managed. But the art-rocker in me loves everything, as there's traces of the magnificent 70s all over this mid-80s masterpiece. The harmonised voices in 'Sitcom' are a good example of this. Camberwell Now are like "secret" prog-rock -- they took things forward somehow and it's marvelously accessible. I've grown accustomed to 'Greenfingers' following on my All's Well CD, so when 'The Ghost Trade' ends with a melting, shimmering wall of keyboard clouds and some faint murmurs of free improv underneath, it feels like a million years of silence are about to begin. But that's why it's nice to have on vinyl, cause you can flip it over!

Art Zoyd - 'Syphonie pour le jour du bruleront les cities' (Cryonic, Inc.)

1980 is an odd year. A friend of mine has this theory that 1980 was neither part of the 70's nor the 80's. He would argue this if presented with any photo, of anything, from 1980, pointing out how fashion was in this weird in-between period (specifically citing sleeve lengths, I think) and popular music felt similarly stuck between the dying throws of disco and the new-wave identity still being worked out. It stood alone. This is all horseshit I heard over a plate of baba ghanouj about 10 years ago so I'm probably misquoting it, but it stuck with me. After all, what are we to make of this weird Art Zoyd record from the same time? Weird, because it's not all that weird. It's intense and theatrical but you'd expect that; there's synthesisers but playing fairly conventional, and second fiddle to dissonant string glissandos. It's Lois Vierk taking out the washing, tripping on 'Masques' weird trumpet improvisations and floating up on tightly composed chordal platforms, like the ones in old Nintendo Mario games that raise and lower on their own, making you time your jumps just right. Though we're assaulted with 'crazy' vocalising as soon as we drop the needle, most of this record is instrumental. Dark, yes; cloudy, sinister, like the backgroup to The Crow II, yes; but strangely it's not even a little bit laughable. Prog's excesses, even to fans like me, have to cause you to grin sometimes, but this feels more pitched on a neoclassical needle than the wizards and Tarkus-things so commonly derided. Maybe it's just the inherent Frenchness causing some distance for me. But this is what I've always associated with French prog - it's no less technically impressive than its British or Italian counterparts, but it lacks that Dionysian edge. These guys are serious and they find excitement in their compositions - because there are surprisingly few 'solos' here. The rebellion is maybe against the freewheelin' flaneur, savoir faire, je ne sais quoi stereotypes we have of the French - these guys are les seriouxes. The 1980 sound is in the production - it's loud and close, with almost no percussion and a glassy sheen on everything, anticipating later 80's treatment of synths and guitars but not quite there yet. And this is supposedly Rock in Opposition but it sounds more like punchy chamber music to me.

Art Bears - 'The World As It Is Today' (ReR)

A title like this would suggest a bold statement of an album, something both philosophical and direct. Well, sure, this is the pen of Chris Cutler, after all. If you didn't think the man who wrote File Under Popular could knock it out of the park, then you're truly underestimating him. This is concise - a 45rpm mini-album, maybe a long EP - yet leaves nothing to be desired. The lovely little booklet rearranges the running order into a three lyrical groups. 'Law', 'Democracy', 'Truth', 'Freedom', 'Peace', and 'Civilisation' are classified as "6 corpses in the mouths of the bourgeoisie", but despite this heavy concept, the songs are light as air. I often forget how traditional the Art Bears actaully could be, at least in terms of instrumentation; most of these songs are drums, piano and guitars and they achieve their innovation largely through structure, composition and affect rather than effect (if you get my drift). Though 'Civilisation', at the end of side 1, is a thick, slow composition that sounds like Morton Feldman pushing a pram. It hangs in the air and never lets go, always on the verge of resolution. Vocally, Dagmar is perfect -- I can't imagine anyone else interpreting a song that is somewhat anti-democracy and transforming it into something so magical. The second lyrical group is "4 songs" and contains catchy tunes like 'The song of the Dignity of Labour Under Capital' which is more like Brecht than Engels, thankfully. The final standalone song is 'Albion, Awake!', ending the album (and the career of Art Bears) on a platform of hope, though first transformed through the most tape-manipulated section of the band's ouvre. Perhaps this twisted unraveling is an abstracted musical story of the workers of the world. The final line is 'Let banners fly like shrapnel and efface the sky!' and while I jump up with my red flag, I then think to the reality of everything that has happened since 1981, and then I get depressed, and then I just listen to some more records to wash away the pain. The real pain, of course, is that my copy of this is slightly warped, which renders 'The Song of Investment Capital Overseas' and 'Democracy' rather unplayable.

Area - 'Caution Radiation Area' (Cramps)

The Italian Get Back gang reissued this in a lovely package with super thick vinyl (preserving the original Cramps label) and a heavy cardstock cover that could stop a bullet; plus they were thoughtful enough to include a plastic inner sleeve mounted inside the paper linernotes, so you don't scratch the record like paper does, but it doesn't bunch up like plastic usually does. This second Area record came out in '74 and it's leaps and bounds beyond their first one. It starts with a super fast keyboard/gutar riff that suggests they've stepped up their game, instrumentally, since Arbeit Macht Frei, but then things start to get weirder. 'ZYG' stars with some arrows of synthy white noise fighting with each other, before forcing itself into a rock structure. Ten-minute 'MIRage ? MIRage !' which opens the second side, is a work of utter brilliance. We get a taste of free jazz; a sort-of-drum solo up against someother tape-affected percussion; a thickly layered bit of Stratos (whose first name is now DemeNtrio) whispering, moaning and gasping; and the usual progrock pyrotechnics though minus a bit of , um, whatever that thing is that Yes does that you hear a little bit of in Area's first album. If there's one criticism it's that the piece just feels like a succession of twisted parts rather than a cohesive whole - but thats totally okay if the parts are this mind-melting. The last track, 'Lobotomia', is the most fucked up of all, with shrill toys, delayed chimes, and the feeling of lifting into the sky. Yep, these Eye-talians have found their voice, and maybe they never sounded more on-target. For a band that's on the Nurse With Wound list, you can sure bash your head to it like it's a dumb guilty rock release. This may be the highest synthesis of all of the different strains of brilliance this band was capable of, balanced across one vinyl disc.

Area - 'Arbeit Macht Frei' (Cramps)

Here's the thing about the Discloated Underbite Spinal Alphabetised Encourager Template: every once in awhile, without realising it, you'll find yourself immersed deep into the Impenetrable Prog Gauntlet. It's hard to see the end of it, since there's so many weird angles and changes, and often a good explorer has been known to disappear in the darkest regions of the IPG, never to be seen again. Even though it's against official Policy, I'm gonna warn you that the last record we looked at (Arbete and Fritid) actually was the secret entrance to one such Gauntlet, which is dominated by a gang of mostly Italians called Area. Area subtitled their name with "international popular group" which was perhaps meant to be ironic. They were stridently political, but I don't understand Italian and I have no idea what it means to be stridently political in Italy, since I just assume that everyone is at least somewhat political. After all, fascists and commies are still fire-bombing each other in the streets every week. Therefore, I'm incapable of dissecting the layers of irony and/or passion captured by the title and artwork. I like to think of Area as "prog as fuck" because they employ many of the concepts that have created our idea of Progressive Rock in the 1970s: jaw-droppingly fast contrapuntal riffs, complex neo-classical song structures, the occasional tendency to go super dorky with flutes, 6-string bass or smooth saxophones, and a willingness to fuck around and break rules. How much the latter concept is explored generally has a direct correlation with how much I like a band, because I'm not really that interested in flashy showmanship. Arbeit Macht Frei has showmaship a-plenty, though there's significantly less investment in the rulebreaking category than their later records. But it's a debut album, and a grand statement for sure. Vocalist Demetrio Statos doesn't overpower the band, though his dramatic opera voice may not be for everyone. This is the only Area record I would put in the same box with commercial prog like Yes and Crimson; there's definite group jamming and heavily affected instrumentation (though the guitar and keyboards, which do have great tones, don't leap away from Western tuning or anything). It's only the last song, 'L'abbattimento dello Zeppelin' that hints at the gradual rejection of rock music that is to follow - the contrabasson gets a little bit more free (perhaps in reference to the title), and the guitar solo sounds like it's off a Wooden Shjips record. Statos's weird mumbling/yelling in the middle is layered over some sparse, surreal free improv and it's just weird, man - til the rock kicks back in, or does it? Open up the gatefold cover and it explains all. A photo of a concentration camp bearing the titular inscription, across from a handgun emblazoned with the Area logo - it's like Marco Ferreri's object from Dillinger e morto going head to toe with the forces of fascism, through the music of Area. Or something. I noticed that the musicians all look very tired in the photo; I guess it's hard work playing that fast and intricately.