Brainiac
Hissing Prigs In Static Couture

THE REVIEW

Audacious band of deviant pseudo-noise, shabby sound destroyers/innovators, Brainiac (Dayton - Ohio) realistically represented, right in the middle of the last decade of the last millennium, a lashing, rattling, vital breath of oxygenating, intangible, enjoyable substance in the magmatic/glassy indie/alternative/rock landscape of stars and str[i]pes.

Fully aware of the not insignificant fact that Dead Kennedys (recently reunited), Butthole Surfers and their mutant ilk have already, in their time, made a bewildering (dis)appearance on planet Earth, they force the improbable large audience into a lopsided and often reckless, sanguine commotion, strongly early-Devo oriented [literally and supinely, paid homage on the (miss)hapen “Nothing Ever Changes”: an (im)POSSIBLE new “freedom of choice”(!!!) ..with an insane “drive”], skillfully and playfully-forcefully mixed with the “typical” (so to speak..) Albinian style appreciated at Touch and Go, mid-nineties period: harsh sounds, squared, often heavily and electronically illuminated, edgy albeit elegantly bewildering: an (im)probable (and quite successful, in modest shattered opinion) attempt to further destabilize the (previously and differently) destabilized sonically-chaotic made in U.S.A.

Beyond the falconing naive/modernist impact, sketched in dazzling multicolored shades, the sonically epidermic distinctive trait can be seen in the melodically/raucous (truly formidable) vocalist and mastermind of the Brainiac project, Timmy Taylor: “corrupt”, improbable, askew, scarred melodies, at times inhumanly filtered through who knows what unwieldy distorting gadgets: listen in this sense, perhaps to the most significant episode of the entire (sub)human collection, the devastated/ting “I Am A Cracked Machine”: 4 minutes and 34 seconds of “pop” devolutionist/visionary madness: one of the most flaming examples of what “truly alternative rock” should/could be if credible (and how difficult it actually is to find now, more than ever) across the Atlantic and beyond.

Grim irony of fate had it that the compelling and little more than sketched (three long-distance works, a few singles and a highly promising, practically posthumous, mini CD: stratospheric herald of an entire new never-released work..), dazzling Brainiac adventure, led by the eccentric vocalist, ceased suddenly and incontrovertibly: Tim passed prematurely due to a car accident, the year following the release of the described disorienting work.

Phenomenal project, great though potentially and definitively unexpressed band: give Them a (albeit posthumous) chance: the Static Couture will fascinate you indelibly.