Action Beat
The Condition

You are a phony when you say you go crazy for dissonant natural harmonics, the scraping of the pick on the strings, the metallic notes beyond the capo, the distorted bass, monotonous and bass-less, the convulsive - confusing - intertwining of hardcore dynamics. You even come to prefer noise when it is not that of the extravagant arrangement, which serves the song, but noise for its own sake. The true Sonic Youth are those of Confusion Is Sex - you say - already less of those of Bad Moon Rising. Daydream Nation is crap. And anyway, Glenn Branca is a genius: the greatest composer of the twentieth century. You've put Glenn Branca's photo on your Facebook profile and, of course, no one knows who he is, and while you pretend to enjoy your superiority, you're dying inside and would like to replace it with one of Freddy Mercury or Ligabue to bask in a load of approval.

"Maelstrom From Drift by Lee Ranaldo is great!": you are a phony. Does a photo exist of Freddy Mercury and Ligabue together? And of Ligabue with his cat?

When you let the strings loose, cuff the gain, and hunch in front of the amp - never having grown your hair like Thurston Moore - you're playing a scene, out of desperation and probable ineptness with the instrument. Your condition is the condition of Action Beat: a pose in the form of a jam in twenty numbered acts. Useless and not even delightful, unless you're playing in Action Beat or another loser band that imitates the symbol bands of loser music - "yeah but losers in a good way," you say. You say? Someone, here on DeBaser, defined Sonic Youth as "much ado about nothing"; very true: now, however, explain to me what the practical use of melody is. The anti-music of Action Beat, at least, has no communicative pretensions: they didn't even have the audacity to give titles to their creations. Commendable that the only audacity is the one on the cover.

You might think "cool!", "awesome!", listening to this noisy group masturbation: for this reason, I advise you not to try it. I, for example, am a regular listener of them lately. I wrote this review and decided to give a five, knowing that by the time it's published, I will have already changed my mind.