Matt: March 2006 Archives

This entry was originally posted at Homogenized and later merged into Neckbeard. Images and links may be broken. Sorry.

Over the course of seven years and four EPs, the Los Angeles-based outfit Mellowdrone has established themselves as the go-to group for downbeat, densely layered, new wave-inspired indie rock. Their latest album, Box, provides more of what fans have come to expect, but at the same time reveals a newfound eclectic sensibility. The band has incorporated elements of dance and industrial music into their trademark sound as well as letting the clouds part from time to time with sparser arrangements and lighter textures.

Opening with the dark and brooding "C'mon Try a Little Bit," Box quickly establishes its modus operandi. But the band soon moves into more approachable territory, "Oh My" benefits from a downright danceable beat, making Mellowdrone sound positively Killers-esque--only, you know, good.

Existing fans might recognize several of the tracks here. That's because, regrettably, four of Box's 13 tracks have been previously released in what are essentially identical forms on the A Demonstration of Intellectual Property and Go Get 'Em, Tiger EPs. This isn't to say they're not great tracks, in fact they contain some of the best moments on Box, it's just that they're a little too familiar to fully appreciate in what's supposed to be a fresh release.

But one of these songs, "Beautiful Day", previously released on Demonstration, will even surprise old fans. The first two-thirds of the song are all gently ambient synth notes played over a pulsing bassline, until a gunshot snare hit rings out and a ghostly choir, buzzing, distorted synthesizers and live drums overtake the song. It's a surprising and welcome twist on the track, and the other previously released songs would benefit from revamps like this.

Singer-songwriter and principle member Jonathan Bates has a powerful croon of a voice, but it's best suited as an instrument than as a vehicle for delivering lyrics. Bates is at his best when he's holding onto those syllables, pondering and chewing one for a moment before moving on to the next. In the sparser and, dare I say, upbeat "Fuck It Man" the words become clearer and start to sound banal, and the track suffers as a result. The majority of the songs, though, settle into a sexy, smoky vibe, epitomized by returning favorite "And Repeat" and future favorite "Orange Marmalade." Both strike a balance between Bates' urgent vocals and a more laid back blend of electronic and acoustic instrumentation.

Now so far it might sound like Bates is the only member of the band, and for a long time he was, but recently Mellowdrone has expanded to become a quartet. Guitarist Tony DeMatteo gets his turn at the helm with album closer "Limb to Limb", which he wrote after being in a debilitating car accident that left him bedridden for three months. If you think this experience makes for a somber song, you'd be right. DeMatteo and Bates share vocal duties, harmonizing over some of the album's strongest lyrics. "Cheers to all, I made it/Just a scratch, I'll make it/Please be sweet, don't say a thing/Makes it easier when no one knows."

Box is a positive evolution for Mellowdrone, one that finds them neither entirely rehashing their older work nor totally reinventing themselves. It's unfortunate that nearly a third of this album has seen release previously, but the strong new material more than makes up for it.

This entry was originally posted at Homogenized and later merged into Neckbeard. Images and links may be broken. Sorry.

The Ecstasy exhibit at Los Angeles' Museum of Contemporary Art illustrated perfectly the banality of drug culture.

The exhibit, subtitled "In and About Altered States" features dozens of pieces either representing or created under the influence of so-called "mind-expanding" substances. Or to put in bluntly, it's about drugs. The curators of Ecstasy tried to make a distinction between two themes, the first is what they call "representational" works, and these are easily the most banal pieces in the show.

Imagine the worst sort of doodles that might be scribbled in a burnout's sketchbook and you have a good idea of what this half of the exhibit comprises. Wow, a painting of mushrooms done in crazy colors, man! A bunch of pills spilled all over the ground, bro. Would you please pass me the dutchie, and preferably from the left hand side? One of the few redeeming works from this set was Carsten Höller's Upside Down Mushroom Room, a room-sized installation in which numerous large scale (more than a meter), spinning, psychotropic mushrooms sprout from the ceiling and hang down at eye level, lit from below.

But then again there's Halcyon Sleep by Rodney Graham, an insufferably dull exercise in futility in which the artist filmed himself sleeping in the backseat of a car after taking sleeping pills. If the piece is meant to induce feelings of boredom and lethargy, then I guess one could call it a success, but you really have to wonder what the point is.

Paul Schimmel, curator of Ecstasy, justifies his exhibit from a historical context thusly, in his essay "Live in Your Head":

Among the many artists and writers who explored altered states during [the Romantic] period are William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Caspar David Friedrich, Henry Fuesli, Theodore Gericault, Francisco de Goya and Edgar Allan Poe. For many of these figures, visions, hallucinations, dreams, and nightmares—sometimes induced by mind-altering substances such as laudanum, opium, and hashish—were the inspiration for works of art that took their viewers to places where the rational mind could not go.

Yes, that may well be true, but the works produced by these artists was at least approachable by rational minds. Their art was interesting to those who were not on opium or hash, something that seems to have escaped many of Ecstasy's artists.

I don't want to make it sound like the exhibit was without merit. The second set of pieces, the ones MOCA calls "experimental", and which are meant to create feelings of intoxication in their viewers, are much more successful. There were several pieces that were truly challenging, mind expanding or at least interesting to view. MATRIX II by Erwin Redl was a sublimely trippy experience in which a large, darkened gallery room was filled floor to ceiling, wall to wall, with evenly spaced green LEDs, giving one the sensation of perhaps floating in space.

But, by and large, Ecstasy is full of pieces which are hard to enjoy unless you are in an "altered state" yourself. And that's just not going to cut it.