Rich over at Super Secret Records just sent me this followup single from Ichi Ni San Shi, I reviewed their previous single just over a year ago and their latest sounds like they're still into exploring a dense array of weird electronics and rock guitar in that late '80s way? (I'm thinking of Klaus Naomi or Herbie Hancock) That odd combination of produced pop, using a heavy dose of synth because it was such a new sound...I can't imagine what it must have been like breaking the seal on an RX-7 and having your mind blown like that...of course you would write everything around it. Those sounds had never been heard, and someone else was definitely going to use them. This opening dotted sine wave on "Here Sometime Today" sounds exactly like The Units, "High Pressure Days" and they have a similar washed together new wave sound, Bill Jeffrey has a smoother, less nervous energy than Devo or The Units, but it would fit right into that enamored with the technology and adding it to what we've already been using sound of the '80s. At least that what it seems like in hindsight, but not getting as far as the super tech groups like Information Society or Camouflage, Ichi Ni San Shi are working around the days when a lot of the organic instruments weren't abandoned just yet...and here they're using a lot of layered trumpet even...and rely on a heavily distorted electric that provides an experimental dissonance, it's a nice contrast to the jagged keys. A dense production that goes through a lot of changes with all six members hard at work plugging the cables in to the old time telephone switching synth thing they lug around from show to show.
B-Sides, "Insurmountable" really pays attention to not only using these bizarre pioneering sounds but capturing them as cleanly as possible, which makes sense in this case. Sheila is after a cool crisp new wave sound, just barely mic'd off a PA. The guitar work here from the get go is playing completely against that precision with crunchy riffs evolving into layers of tuneless, rhythmless noodling...a complete human breakdown, the machines have won my friend...the last gasp of vibrating strings. The clicks of the high hat against this fading out warped mess is where Ichi is going to find it's most interesting moments for me. It's when they go for the cold unemotional pop that I want to go back to the green neon grid photo backgrounds and pink splatter paint paints of the future.
Check out Ichi Ni San Shi at their bandcamp page, easily there's no one really working along these lines, they're following along with the Art Museums in letting their lonely freak flag fly.
Red vinyl, freudian sleeve (or is because I just saw that Cronenberg movie?), I'm still not sure what exactly that mushroom/seashell thing is...it also looks like the behind of someone diving into a pool if you squint....available from Super Secret Records.
No comments:
Post a Comment