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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (July 5, 2002)
Tu» 5.2002' MUSIC Teen queens Imperial Teen grows up; plus international glitch, trickles and rally cries “the shape of the letter v.” Still, as in other works by Berthling, this C D is a pretty serious piece. This one will please fans of Pole, Carsten Nicolai and Vladislav Delay. —TN F ountains Kenneth Atchley • Auscultate Research O n Imperial Teen • Merge Records F ounded eight years ago in San Francisco by Roddy Bottum, an unlikely gay pop music fig ure during his stint as keyboard player for ’80s rap/metal outfit Faith No More, Imperial Teen was a breath of fresh New Wave air. Bottum recruited friends Lynn Perko, Will Schwartz and Jone Stebbins (all singers who alternate instrumental duties), and together they set forth a nonchalantly utopian boy/girl, gay/straight vibe on two albums full of catchy, rhythmically punchy songs that hid a bittersweet, sometimes sardonic, sometimes darkly sexual, lyrical bite in their sing-song melodies. The Teens don’t sound like Imperial Teen’s latest is right On Sleater-Kinney, but a comparison is apt; both groups came together at almost the Activist Strategizing in Los Angeles. same post-Cobain cultural moment, and both The band’s work fights social injustices with are queer/queer-friendly guitar bands who rock sound and action while defying conceptual sweet and direct, not self-indulgent or preten boundaries. On this recording we have rally tious. Their spiritual forebears are the G o-G o’s cries from the streets and updated techno beats. and the Smiths— not the grim, stifling, (most It’s chock full of lush electro buzz and click ly) heterosexual male claustrophobia of grunge. amid urban tribes telling their stories through With On, they’ve released their most accom chant. Sizzling open wires, street samples and plished record yet. The guitars are clean and minimal glitch are just part of this urban saga. lean, Bottum and Schwartz add keyboard layers Alongside understated tribal rhythms, the to nearly every song, and the expanded musical streets of Los Angeles are presented as a breed ing ground of boiling strife. scope lends an abundant stylistic diversity. The propulsive rockers “Ivanka” and “Baby” are rife At just less than one hour long, this perfor- with addictive tambourines and hand claps. mance/exhibition soundtrack aims to provoke (The latter has a chorus that irresistibly goes “1 a list of visual references. With help from love baby, baby is a dog”— it’s the best love song G.R.R.L., Otto von Shirack and Spike, the to a dog since the B-52’s “Quiche Lorraine.”) mix has a sense of confident absurdity in “Million $ Man" and “My Spy,” with their approaching its social criticisms. decadent guitar/keyboard excesses, wouldn’t Since 1994 one of Ultra Red’s main objec sound out of place on an early 7 0s Roxy Music tives has been creating public installations deal album. The sweeping, almost unbearably tune ing with issues like queer public sex, housing pro ful “Captain" is the best song the Beach Boys jects and needle exchange. These audio activists never recorded, and “Undone,” for all its have developed a faceless style to analyze queer melancholy ambivalence about radio hits, class structure at its various points of erosion and sounds deliciously like a should-be radio hit. have made ambient interpolations that capture the apolitical complacency of the time. Lyrically, the approach is more subversive than confrontational; the themes are post — TJ Norris modern (media/celebrity on “Ivanka” and T iny little white “Teacher’s Pet,” individualism vs. conformity on "Our Time,” “Mr. & Mrs.” and “City ones ( like HANDFULS OF SALT) Song”), but it’s all too playful and engaging to Andreas Berthling • be a treatise. These smart California kids prefer Mitek sassy and wry to preachy, probably (and right fully) because it’s a lot more fun that way. On actually couldn’t have come at a better ndreas Berthling time; with our pop choices increasingly nar creates micro- wave symphonies rowed to overblown pseudo-earnestness or screeching vapidity, it’s good to have sonic of digital glitch. This one— his sixth release since 1999— on Swedish label Mitek was proof that the desire to create gratifying ear candy and the need to say something meaning recorded in Chicago and Miami Beach. ful aren’t mutually exclusive. Squeaky noises, drones and static draw mul —Christopher M cQuam tiple images for visual lis teners. Replete with sam ples by Jim O ’Rourke, S ustainable D evelopments Tomas Hallonsten and (D esarrollos S ostenibles ) Johan Berthling, this gem Ultra Red • Beta Bodega Coalition modifies our contemporary, vibrating culture to a T. os Angeles collective Ultra The recording plays on Red, led by the forthright Dont Rhine, offers a record multiple-layered tracks and has a sense of humor as in ing of depth and power as an adjunct record release party to titles like “while brent was out in the kitchen” and the exhibition Democracy When? A I « round Fault Recordings sublabel Aus- cultare Research introduces us to the world of Kenneth Atchley s symphonic sculptures here on Fountains. This debut is certainly not easy listening, it’s active listening. Like an oblique performance art piece, this disc blends field recordings with a long list of natural and synthetic ingredients accumulating sounds from sculptural fountains. Atch ley's academic approach meets where the senses do—sight and sound embedded outside gallery confines. Fountains treats its listener to rushing floods and other spectacular water-based sources. These trickles, falls and geysers temper the mind’s consistency as the noise channels change in tones and drones. The recording documents three “fountains” (each about 20 minutes in length) dedicated to performers and creative luminaries, inspired by sounds and words, streets and liquids in a range of variables. “fountain_l999.20” is a memorial to radical queer composer Phil Harmonic (Kenneth Wern er), who performed with Boston’s Sonic Arts Union in the mid-’6Qs, and composer Jim Hor ton of the League of Automatic Music Com posers. This first fountain plays delicately in its wet wisdom of serene and disjointed phrasing. A t the center of this triptych is “fountain_l998.3,” an uninterrupted sonic waterfall in which the background noise becomes the foreground to a waning sequencer, barely audible over the din. Inside this barrage of Merzbow-esque tranquillity there are lost slight voices and pitch tests leaking out. In closing, “fountain_2001.5” drips seductive ly through organic spaces between crystals and metal objects. Nature’s pounding is synthesized, remanufactured and processed. A pleasant, con torted surprise for the lil’ surfer in our mind’s eye! — TN J A • • • • • r Hardware Pet Food & Supplies Gardening Tools & Supplies Down-to-Earth Products U-Haul Trailers & Trucks M ention th is ad « fo r 10% d isc o u n t 10920 NW St. Helens Road (503) 286-1291/Fax: (503) 286-9592 îfrtflfrfs yÿ £bocol«tes Cboeoli More Than Candy... Panache Espresso™ Tillamook Ice Cream™ Cards & Gifts S3 1560 Columbia Blvd. St. Helens (503) 366-9602 every sleeping beauty needs beai Beds Plus 52567 Columbia River Hwy Scappoose, OR 503/543-3066 I ntegracao M arc Behrens • SIRR.ecords | ortuguese label ' SIRR.ecords is making an indelible mark with intriguing releases by artists like Pimmon and Oren Ambarchi. Integrate (Integration) is like an audio theater piece filled with layers of com mon sounds and sparse silences; you’ll notice yourself moving closer to the sound system. Marc Behrens has developed intensely intri cate and, at times, claustrophobic pieces of eerie brilliance. His work on a Mac is blended with “performance” sounds of Italian forests, collectively pairing our natural and digital worlds. This C D took one year to piece togeth er, informed by trips to Slovenia, Germany, Italy, Spain and England. It is best experienced with one’s eyes closed. — tn jn C hristopher M c Q uain is a Portland free-lance writer. TJ NORRIS is a Portland free-lance writer and artist. Find him at www.tjnorris.net. www.jusfout.com For links to advertiser websites and community organizations.
