It’s that well versed and widely understood scenario when you are at a club and one of your friends hurls himself onto the dance floor (as per usual) and disappears into a trance like state jerking around like a half dead pig being prodded with an electric staff, and all and sundry silently laugh seeing his foolhardy attempt at dancing with two left feet, and yet nobody ever sits him down, explains the delicate situation to him about how some men can and some men do and other men can’t and some men shouldn’t. We all let him continue… we let him make a fool of himself, and more importantly believe that he is a good dancer because we don’t want to hurt his feelings. Well sorry. Some people can’t fucking dance, and some people can’t fucking make music.
There is a mountain of gods who lie in ashes based on the volume of scene-changing music they have delivered over the years, and yet receive back paltry amounts of remuneration or recognition for the art they have challenged the world with. Of course most people are aware of Tony Conrad, Rhys Chatham, Wolf Eyes, This Heat, and even the first ever Velvet Underground drummer Angus Maclise who went on to make some of the most inspirational drone/tantric insanity music based at his hideaway in Kathmandu. Recorded on tapes and with all assortments of insane able and bodied apprentices he concocted drones, drum patterns, melodies so hash-heavy and far out that unless you really give them time they will just sound irrational and obtuse. The reason I gave them time, and therefore fell in love, was that there was a certain amount of intelligent reasoning and melody and movement and tonality in even the most tinnitus inflicting works of his. You knew, even when you didn’t get it, that there was something there TO GET… and you knew it was going to be a labour of love.. and you looked forward to the day when the skies would part and they would come crashing down like a splintered ride cymbal off a dodgy stand. And when that moment came you got it.. not like some fucking Aufklarung but more a journey spent and journey squandered in the pursuit of becoming familiar with one insane mans idea of music.
Varying degrees of experimental noise have failed and succeeded over the years, no doubt, and the playing field is left fairly open… experimental reaching all the way from bands like Tortoise to bands like Autechre, Winterkalte. There are universes between these artists… their delivery and aesthetic sometimes the complete opposite.. but the one thing that threads the whole shebang together is their genius, their ability to understand music and to push the boundaries, so that we have to catch up.
Free jazz is very much the same. Any asshole who can play the sax or trumpet can record a “free jazz” record. But that doesn’t make him an Ornette Coleman, a Sun Ra. People don’t understand that free jazz and experimental electronica is not about anything “random”. These moments are felt. They are designed. They are destined. The music pours out of a creative well that is so overflowing with ideas and tension that sometimes the changes can’t wait for the mandatory breaks but spill out and encompass time and take over the need for formula or discipline. The music becomes a being, a snake, a river… It carves its way onwards regardless of spectators.. It is understood by the players (almost) and dives forward opening new areas of thought and new challenges. The very departure from the constraints of law and meter create a whole new genre of music which in turn ends up inspiring and changing the very forms that it rebelled against. Music cannot be controlled if the purveyor of the music is creative. It can be held back, caressed, but not controlled. A person with true passion for music will understand that it is a gift, it is far beyond their own comprehension, it is something they are humbled to channel through them and wary of the fact that it cannot last forever. True art is in those frantic moments, when the mind is silenced and thought is no longer the driving force.. when the music itself is pushed forth and the musician has the ability to flaunt what is given him. Music that is written and not created/-ive sounds different. It lacks the soul, the fluidity. Having said that it can also be praised for its ingenuity or mechanical perfection. A template to demonstrate your hours/months/years of practice in mastering your instrument. All good.
I’ve seen a million bands claiming to be Free Jazz or experimental or noise. However, they are all far too concerned with everything other than the music to truly have grasped what it is. The music speaks so they don’t have to. The music moves so they don’t have to. All they have to do is understand it, feel it, and keep playing until the moment is over. Anything beyond that becomes forced and contrived. Although unfortunately, you have to HAVE it to be able. That can’t be taught.
Botkaput may have a decent knowledge of music and bands that inspired them, but sadly the music itself fails on just about every level conceivable to man. I know this will sound extremely harsh, and especially to the poor fuckers who spent hours and hours making these R2D2 epileptic attacks, but if there’s one thing on earth that you could have done right (leaving aside the music) it’s to have recognized that NEVER in any band that has ever mattered (which have vocalists) are vocal melodies a secondary thought. Though the vocals may be bizarrely timed or out of place they are not secondary. Artists of these caliber choose vocalists that can plug into whatever planet they’re from and contribute to the overall galactic space harmonies. This has nothing to do with random screams. They are felt and executed in that fashion. Take Damo Suzuki for instance. Not any old Japanese drifter could have helped make Can one of the most important bands of our time. His helter-skelter vocals, though strange and un-patterned, are still consciously understood and recorded thusly.
The scatterbrained, random, frustratingly off kilter vocals on Brompton Cocktail Party kill this already dead record into the ground. Even Moondog in his furious majestic journey of creating a soundtrack to his own maniacal brain had some disturbingly brilliant vocal parts, voices that get stuck in your head minutes after you heard the record. Albums bursting with unusual timings, percussive epilepsy, vocal diversions.. yet with the brilliance of a true genius who was hell bent on relieving his head of all the frenzied ideas bouncing around there at a million miles an hour… ideas that could only be reconstructed in music as baffling to us on first listen, but the slow culmination of patience and open-mindedness reveals the musicality and originality of his life’s work.
On Botkaputs album, song after song erupts with hectic beats almost hurrying for prominence, drowned by the ill-used vocals, squandered by a sleeping band mate who suddenly awakens from a stupor only to fumble keyboard ditties that have no time or place anywhere. This is not the orchestration or creation of a timeless masterpiece that years from now people will look back on and marvel at. These are just the workings of someone who listens to decent music but obviously doesn’t get it. Otherwise this record would never have been made. The vocalist sounds like they are plugged into the keyboard and randomly receive electric shocks which replay themselves on tape as the yelpings of a slowly dying despot in a pool of his own feces and blood silently disappearing into the mire only to offer up a final Oooooh before his life-juice and his skin and his bones become unseeable in the dark mess that is his own doing.
A mental picture is emerging. Of three art-twats sitting in an apartment on a rainy day tripping balls sat around a laptop, pressing record, then fumbling around on their keyboards and asking some nearby hitchhiker to yodel and moan like a labour pained woman. Cacophonic drudgery. Nothing short of criminal. My only regret is that I spent a few hours listening to this record to form an “opinion”.
On this type of release a song by song deconstruction would only add insult to injury.
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17 Responses to “The Nob-ends of Plutonia”
Svein Olav Andersen - April 29th, 2010 at 19:13
I don’t get it. Obviously. I would rate this probably around 8.0. I agree to a certain degree about the vocals (sometimes). But I really enjoy the sick electronic melodies. They have jovial rhythms but yet create a sense of paranoia and “something gone wrong” or “threatening to break down at any minute”. Maybe this is the soundtrack in Bender’s mind after he didn’t drink alcohol for a long time. I must applaude you as a very good writer though.
Svein Olav Andersen - April 29th, 2010 at 19:19
I agree that not everybody should be making music, but I firmly believe that EVERYBODY should dance (like nobody’s watching)!
Benjamin Sand - April 29th, 2010 at 19:56
The only thing I can agree with you on is that it feels like “something gone wrong”. I found this record so intolerable that I actually got physically angry listening to it. People are strange, different and wonderful.
Svein Olav Andersen - April 30th, 2010 at 16:00
I guess since we agree on so little, you will never let me do the Evil Heat… ARGHH, that sucks…
Benjamin Sand - May 1st, 2010 at 12:46
Hey! I haven’t been booking those for the past 4 months since I was in Asia.. I might start again.. but I am not sure yet.
If we started to dig in our respective music libraries I am sure we would have tons of matches!
Botkaput - May 3rd, 2010 at 10:40
My favorite part of the review is “the music itself fails on just about every level conceivable to man”. This quote really puts the critic in a position where it is hard to take this pretentious nonsense seriously.
What strikes me as particularly odd are the several references to drone music. Especially when the main concern was the random pattern. Drone and random are not related! Therefore not relevant for anything other than the sake of namedropping, which seems like the one thing the critic is really good at.
The critic states that the major flaw with the album is that it is sounds just like random ramblings and is not purposefully designed.
Even a drunken chimp will hear that the songs are mainly groove-based variations of repetition. Added is outbursts of twisted improvised solos that serve to dissolve the groove. Some of the songs are more mainstream whereas the rest are gradually more extreme versions of this concept. The vocals are complementing the fragmented compositions and are not at all just random screams.
The problem here is mainly a conflict of musical attitude. While the critic himself proclaims his inhibitions with witnessing anything not suited to his fancy - others aren’t that uptight and might even have a sense of humor about it. When producing experimental music one does not need to make it fit anyone’s definition of musical format. Rather more interesting is trying to break it.
Sure, it is a challenge and is not suited to everybody’s taste. It requires a very special positive weirdo to appreciate this music. It certainly isn’t designed to please conformist cunts.
Benjamin Sand - May 3rd, 2010 at 14:50
Obviously Tony Conrad, Rhys Chatham, Moondog, Angus Maclise, Winterkalte are all perfect examples of the music taste of a conformist cunt. It’s obvious that the artists I mentioned were some of the most important artists in the history of breaking up the norms/fashioning an entirely new experience. If you want more name-dropping I would be happy to oblige.
The point of the drone references and experimental references was to create a basic mixture from which to refer to your fumblings. It was more the aesthetic, the approach, the genealogy of the music that would intertwine with whatever it truly was you were “attempting” with that record.
Call it what you want. Its your music. Your “art”. Anything can be wrapped in superlatives and still stink of horseshit.
This just further proves what a complete tit the whole project is. I am sorry, the record was one of the worst things I have ever heard in my life.
Botkaput - May 5th, 2010 at 11:09
Surely I am not comparing my music to these legends of experimental music. That is my point exactly, I am not trying to sound like the artists and pioneers you are referring to. Their music is great inspiration, but their musical style is too different as a reference.
Why not write a review about the actual music instead of making lists of distinguished artists you like? No need to be able to mention all of them!
Svein Olav Andersen - June 6th, 2010 at 11:42
Benjamin, this is ridiculous!
Svein Olav Andersen - June 10th, 2010 at 21:57
This record is fucking great. READERS, check it out for yourselves:
http://botkaput.com/
Maybe the reason why the other artists mentioned in the review have so little in common with this music is because this record is so original that it’s hard to find similar artists to compare it with. It’s a challenging listen, but also FUN. Maybe I’m the only one who like it? But then again, I REALLY DIG IT! I have listened to this album a couple of times since the review came out, and first time I was so stoned that I didn’t trust my judgement, the second time I was straight as hell, and it still sounded incredibly awesome. Rating this 1,5 might be the biggest “crime” in norwegian record reviews of 2010. But the reviewer still WRITES brilliantly (and I must applaude him for that). I think that even records that are Great will not please Everybody. But certainly I think many people, also (or especially) those with “good musical taste”, will find this record a vital and refreshing piece of music. It’s not even as “random” as it might sound upon first listens. Maybe my portal into this music has to do with my love of Old-school electronica from the 50s and 60s. A time when electronic music was Fun. I would also like to add that I liked this album a lot on first listen. And it gets better and better. But if you don’t like it at first, maybe you never will. People are different. Maybe I am indeed a “positive weirdo”.
If you only have time to listen to one song, I recommend the title track.
Franky - June 15th, 2010 at 22:52
Well, had to check out the album after reading this review.. Pretentious namedropping aside (it is what it is!), a review this opinionated - without much substance to back it up - can only trigger curiosity.
To complete my little rant, some without English as a first language try too hard to sound like a native speaker. The mandatory use of ‘fuck’ in every conceivable context is tolerable, but try not to include all words with a hint of sophistication available in your vocabulary. It does not show good command of English, in fact It’s just too much - and a (slight) pain in the ass to read.
As for the music, I need more time to digest. A lot more time!
Benjamin Sand - June 19th, 2010 at 12:20
Franky! you nob juice. I am (fucking) British.
You, on the other hand, seem to be a lost soul swimming in a fish bowl, year after year.
Ann Sung-an Lee - June 20th, 2010 at 17:19
Haha. My favorite part is, “I am (fucking) British.” When I was writing in the UK, these forum and web geeks usually responded about some inadequacy of my grammar or spelling (I had to tell one reader to “GET A LIF!” once)– here in Norway, people get appalled at too much of the word “fuck” or super opinionated statements– suffice to say, if you read any of my favorite musical journalists of all time, not only are they over the top subjective, but most of them I suggest you’d have to cover your pretty little innocent ears and wash yr mouth with soap…
Svein Olav Andersen - June 24th, 2010 at 01:53
But the album sounds great anyway.
Benjamin Sand - July 6th, 2010 at 17:22
I think I get it Svein. You like the record!
Svein Olav Andersen - July 9th, 2010 at 13:32
Good. I think maybe one day, you will be walking down a street, and you will hear some strangely familiar music coming from an apartment, and before you remember it’s that Botkaput record, suddenly the skies will part and come crashing down like a splintered ride cymbal off a dodgy stand, and then you will remember, oh yeah, it’s that terrible Botkaput record, but it will be too late, because you will already have liked the music by then. Hahah.
Good news for everyone who like this record; Botkaput is in the studio again. I have already been informed (before this review was written btw) that this first album was a one-time experiment, and will not be repeated, I think maybe we should be expecting doom/drone metal stuff on the new one, seriously, I am not kidding. Whatever it will be, I am excited!!!
Benjamin Sand - July 22nd, 2010 at 22:58
God bless you and god bless botkaput! Just aim the speakers in a different direction to mine! hehe..