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Rating:
The author of this review is not particularly fond of electronics, nor of the certain (and to say the least controversial) timbral-instrumental solutions that characterized much of the music produced in the 1980s. Similar skepticism was demonstrated by much of the critics, and it ended up negatively influencing the overall judgment expressed on the "new proposals" of those years; "years of regression," it has been said, and looking at certain (terrible) mainstream pop of the decade, it would be difficult to overturn such a consideration, widely proven and justified by the tons of "musical junk" (I echo Battiato's words in "Bandiera Bianca") produced, unfortunately, even by artists of certain significance. Besides, saying "electronics" often equates to saying "coldness," "intangibility," "banal and repetitive sequentiality"; instinctively, one is led to think of the predictable iteration of binary rhythms, of the canonical and obsessive "four-four time" that became a religion for hordes of musicians without technique or imagination. I myself, a technicist by philosophy (which will not likely be considered a virtue by many), have often thought that many of those pseudo-musicians would have done better to choose other professions, such was the poverty denounced by the products of a period that, on the contrary, today awaits a serious re-evaluation. A re-evaluation that finally takes into account those artistic proposals which, at the time, were not given (or were only partially given) their rightful merits, labeled as "alternative" and far more interesting, precisely because they were alien to the obscene seriality imposed by the record industry and a now prevailing, pervasive, omnipresent cult of the image.
In fact, electronics did not "kill," did not erase the good that previous decades had expressed: it was indeed a lethal weapon in the hands of many young people ignorant of music and poor in ideas (Punk had spread the concept that everyone, but really everyone, could pick up an instrument), but when it met the astral and unreachable genius of "superior" intellects, it was able to produce results of extraordinary lyricism, sensitivity, and authenticity; it is inevitable to mention monuments of the caliber of David Sylvian (with and after Japan) and Ryuichi Sakamoto, but I want to dedicate this review to one of the many projects born from the mind of a phenomenal musician, worthy of being included in my very personal category of the "five most influential artists of the last thirty years"; a musician essentially self-taught in terms of education, tireless and voracious researcher by philosophy, far from a puristically academic interpretation of musical forms as well as from the most rigid "laboratory" intellectualism: I am talking about Arto Lindsay, a prominent figure in the New York avant-garde scene of the 1980s, guitarist and singer but above all "theorist" of surprising proposals for modernity and overall quality.
Here we are not interested in the Lindsay of DNA, nor that of the Lounge Lizards or the Golden Palominos, which I plan to discuss in further contributions, but in the more controversial and electronic Lindsay of the Ambitious Lovers, an intuitive and versatile user of modern technologies as well as an intelligent exceptional interpreter of the era's trends; initially born as a vocal trio with the participation of David Moss and Mark Miller, the group expanded with the additions of keyboardist Peter Scherer and drummer Anton Fier, who needs no introduction. With them, our artist shapes a unique dialectic of synthesis, in which those "ethnically characterized" elements of Brazilian music destined to become the trademark of the bespectacled guitarist, who lived in Brazil for several years when he was very young, play a decisive role; "Ethno-Funk" in the mold of David Byrne, it has been (rightfully) said, without neglecting the markedly Synth-Pop context in which the pieces develop. Much (and inevitable) space is given to programming and electronic drums, but also to peculiar instruments from the Brazilian percussion tradition such as the agogo, pandeiro, and surdo: it is no coincidence that in "Envy," the debut album of the new formation dated 1984, four Bossa Nova musicians (Reinaldo Fernandes, Toni Nogueira, and the brothers Claudio and Jorge Silva) also accompany Lindsay.
The atmospheres produced by this singular and varied ensemble are pervaded by the usual, alienating negativity of the "No-Wave" movement that had in Lindsay one of its main animators and interpreters, and the instrumental approach is inspired by a "deviated" minimalism, obsessive, apparently camouflaged by timbral solutions familiar to radio "easy listening" but in reality radical, extreme, making the album's listening anything but easy and linear. Moments of skeletal and unsettling (as well as reflective) rarefaction alternate with bursts of brutal, animalistic aggressiveness, where the natural complement to the leader's neurasthenic guitarism are the particular voice modulations, also an "instrument" in the full sense of the term and open to unusual contortions and distortions. Everything is subjected to the devastation of a deforming, hysterical, defeatist aesthetic, capable of deconstructing the canonicity of compositional rules and (but it's perhaps superfluous to emphasize it) the traditional boundaries between genres. To define the work in question simply as "Post-Punk", as it has also been done, is not only reductive, it is above all offensive; and not because I attribute a necessarily negative connotation to Punk, but because it is difficult not to take into account the references to a certain electronic Fusion and the nascent World Music, despite the undeniable relativity of such labels: more than the English-born electronic New Wave, I hear echoes of what will soon be, the electronic Miles Davis of "Tutu" and the technological Zappa of "Jazz From Hell".
The use of synclavier and digital programming in the opening "Cross Your Legs" leaves no doubt: Funk is just one of many ingredients added to the cauldron of styles being listened to, in view of a dynamic, almost "danceable" development that suddenly encounters the agitated whirl of a percussion section; "Trouble Maker" evolves between pulsating synth-bass lines and a delicate keyboard "continuum" capable of recalling certain "afro-oriented" insights of Al Di Meola's contemporary Fusion, while the use of the voice is unconventional, furiously desecrating. The "carnivalesque" Samba of "Pagode Americano," sung in Portuguese, introduces the trivial experimentalism of "Nothing's Monstered" and the spectral asymmetries of "Crowning Roar." Excellent, exquisite is the attention to micro-rhythmic details of the murky "Too Many Mansions," with bass sounds modulated to create an evocative "fretless-like" effect among Lindsay's vocal sobs, as irresistible is the syncopated Electro-Funk of "Let's Be Adult." Following are two brief interludes ("Venus Lost Her Shirt" and "My Competition"), as well as a track for percussion only ("Badù"), before what is undoubtedly the most intense moment of the entire album: the extraordinary (and very personal) reinterpretation of "Dora," a Brazilian song written in 1945 and here proposed in an exciting version dominated by the electric piano sounds and Lindsay's voice, more inspired than ever. Another percussion interlude ("Reberibe") follows before the agitated and hyper-electronic closure of "Locus Coruleus," an impressive sequence of very "Zappa-like" rhythmic evolutions.
Four stars for an album that enthusiasts of the character, and not only, will find difficult to overlook.
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