Artist: De Staat
Title: Machinery
Label: Cool Green Recordings
Genre: Rock
Bitrate: 202kbit av.
Time: 00:40:54
Size: 62.12 mb
Rip Date: 2011-02-11
Str Date: 2011-03-07
01. Ah, I See 3:28
02. Sweatshop 3:17
03. Ill Never Marry You 3:01
04. Old Macdonald Dont Have No Farm No More 4:01
05. Im A Rat 3:48
06. Keep Me Home 4:34
07. Tumbling Down 2:50
08. Psycho Disco 3:15
09. Rooster-Man 4:02
10. Serial Killer 3:33
11. Back To The Grind 5:05
Release Notes:
One of the biggest dangers in music journalism is hyperbole – either
succumbing to it or producing it – and so press releases must be
treated with the utmost caution lest you be led astray by their wildly
over-eager praise and deeply emotive adjectives. However, the press
release that accompanied De Staat was enough to arouse interest and if
the comparisons drawn (Nick Cave, Captain Beefheart, Queens of the
stone age) only draw part of the picture, well we can forgive them for
getting hung up on the big names.
Actually, the first name that springs to mind when checking out De
Staat’s excellent second album ‘Machinery’ is the Butthole Surfers.
That is old Butthole surfers (before they got all screwed up by
electronic gizmos on ‘weird revolution’) when they released singles
like ‘Pepper’ and hard rock belters like ‘the lord is a monkey’ and, in
the same vein, De Staat are genre-hopping Gremlins of the first order
who take in the eclectic, grand slamming funk of Beck, the dance
grooves of Kelis’ ‘Milkshake’, the horny soul of QOTSA via “Make it wit
chu” and the lost, gothic romanticism of Nick Cave often within the
same song.
Opening with the slamming “Ah, I see” which has a massive bass rumble,
sub-rave repetitive sound effects and guitars which are channelled from
a heavy metal concert, it’s as if Primus and the Butthole Surfers have
magically got it together and reappeared after a decade in the
wilderness and the result is electrifying. Torre Florim’s mercurial
vocals sit at the heart of the thing – like Gibby Haynes he adopts
whatever character suits the song, often sounding completely different
depending upon the musical backdrop his band decide to provide as we
quickly see on the second track; the bonkers, brilliant slice of
twisted alternative pop-funk that is “sweatshop”, a track that
references Outkast, Kelis and Beck without missing a beat or sounding
in any way contrived. It’s mad as a fish in willies, but a huge amount
of fun. Moving swiftly on without pausing for breath the band lurch
into “I’ll never marry you” which is so Nick Cave-esque you have to
pause to make damn sure you haven’t popped in some weird-ass
alternative compilation into the CD player instead especially as the
chorus sees the track segue blithely into pure QOTSA territory complete
with falsetto and languid guitars. However, this is De Staat and they
can only remain serious for so long which is why the insane “Old
Macdonald don’t have no farm no more” (which sounds like a martinet
Sergeant-Major singing a marching song to a skeletal, bass-laden dance
track) appears immediately afterwards and sends the lunacy, and genius,
levels into overdrive.
If ‘I’ll never marry you’ contained elements that were QOTSA, ‘I’m a
rat’ is pure Josh Homme sleaze, with a creepy falsetto backed by a
gentle, groin-rocking groove that suits the bedroom far better than the
dance floor although it may prove effective in either, and you start to
wonder if maybe De Staat are trying to replace Barry White as the
bedroom crooners of choice. If that is there aim, however, they hide it
well when they unleash deranged tracks like ‘keep me home’ which is
dark, brooding and sounds like Black Rebel Motorcycle Club playing the
soundtrack to one of David Bowie’s cocaine-induced nightmares complete
with haunting gospel-esque backing vocals and lush instrumentation.
Upon fading out through a haze of feedback and unsettling noise
‘Tumbling down’ resets the band’s groove via a mechanistic drum beat
and Blur (13 era) style harmonies – sort of how you imagine 13 would
have sounded if it had been produced by Trent Reznor and Saul Williams
while ‘Psycho disco’ sounds more-or-less exactly as you might imagine
it would sound!
With paranoia seemingly creeping in to the band’s set, ‘rooster man’ is
a fantastic slab of twisted stoner groove that suggests that the
initial high of the first few tracks has now diminished to a vague,
sweat-soaked sheen of paranoia that makes for unhinged, but utterly
addictive listening. Huge slabs of synth crawl over the bass-led groove
while the vocals shimmer under the layer of reverb that attempts to
smother them. If hell has a disco, this could very well be its
spectacular soundtrack. ‘Serial killer’ brings back the funk, although
it’s a dark, twisted funk far from the half-assed, dull, pop-infused
funk of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers and it sounds quite brilliant. Final
track ‘back to the grind’ lives up to its name by referencing Beck’s
“soul sucking jerk” in terms of attitude and sheer visceral thrill with
huge slabs of grinding rhythm shooting through it.
De Staat, it has to be said, are quite, quite brilliant. While it is a
given that they will not appeal to the more metal-minded readers who
visit SonicAbuse, for those who have a hankering for the days when Mike
Patton would bounce between Loveage, Tomahawk and Pepping Tom, when
Butthole Surfers provided the soundtrack to Beavis and Butthead and
when Primus ground out twisted slabs of funky brilliance then this is
for you. Comparisons to QOTSA, Nick Cave, Captain Beefheart and the
like are fair and understandable, but there’s so much more going on
here – as if Torre Florim’s twisted muse has infected the other members
of this unique band and sent all five spinning off on some mad, Hunter
S. Thompson journey into the mescaline-soaked desert. Inspiring, insane
and ingenious, this is what pop music should sound like rather than the
mass-produced, soulless, mindless crap ground out on X factor.
‘Machinery’ should be required listening for anyone with a pulse – it
really is quite remarkable.
http://www.myspace.com/destaat
http://www.last.fm/music/De+Staat
http://www.mediafire.com/?r1yjjwccg2fh9uz
ไม่มีความคิดเห็น:
แสดงความคิดเห็น