One of the things I always find fascinating about Crass is their unique combination of gutter-level punk rock with avant-garde music approaches. Penny Rimbaud is very into avant-garde music & free jazz, & even on their punkiest tracks, theres a lot of this influence in the production. Crass had a unique SOUND. Many people I know who are not into punk, but into more avant-garde music, choose Crass as the one punk band they like. The first single (Reality Asylum) is a spoken word piece, backed by an amazing sound collage, and wouldnt sound out of place on a Current 93 or Nurse With Wound album (In fact, the vocalists from Crass appear on albums by both Current 93 & Nurse With Wound). Similar freeform pieces appear on all Crass albums, & the band got less punk towards the end, & put out several albums which their hardcore following hated & found self indulgent. The last Crass album released whilst they were still going (Yes Sir I Will) is usually despised by Crass fans, being more or less 2 sides of improvised music, with a constant vocal on top, shouted or spoken, from a long very articulate piece written by Penny Rimbaud. The absence of tunes & the literacy of the words makes, in my opinion, the vocals so extraordinarily powerful, that Ive often been moved to tears listening to it. The music is extraordinarily inventive, & goes off in some very interesting directions. Im sure The Wire magazine would call it free rock improv or something like that. On this track here, despite its punky impact, theres still lots of strange things happening in the music.Theres a rhythm from the drums & bass, but the guitars are just making this high pitched drone. Theres something like a loop of feedback running throughout the entire thing, & very loud in the mix. Theres also a long silent section in the middle (a nod to John Cage perhaps ?). Its very peculiar when you listen to whats going on ~
Posted on: Thu, 02 Oct 2014 11:08:03 +0000
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