DNA
Last Live at CBGB's

As is often the case, John Zorn, besides being a very capable saxophonist/frontman/dictator for countless avant-klezmer-noise-metal oriented bands (...), also engages in discovering artists from musical landscapes akin to his own, with the aim of releasing their works. Now that his record label of reference is Tzadik, accessing some past projects - in this case, to the Avant label, which released three LPs of Naked City - through the classic record store is difficult. It requires patience and the willingness to spend several euros on these darn Japanese editions.

Anyway, after an intercontinental flight, the album landed straight into the CD player of my room, with its very limited duration (29 minutes) and with my expectations high as rarely ever. A DNA record is not often seen around, and I had never listened to them before. Well, the effect was bewildering: a cross between Derek Bailey, the most abstract early Einstürzende Neubauten, and the brevity of the Ramones. The recording is very clean, perhaps too much so to witness something wild and bare. The three DNA members are Arto Lindsay, born in Virginia but Brazilian by adoption, Tim Wright, a bassist borrowed from Pere Ubu, and Ikue Mori, in drummer mode before converting to the laptop. All three, decades away from that evening of June 25, 1982, sacred monsters. The idea is this: Ikue Mori and Wright "support" the pieces, making them minimally structured, while Lindsay tries to destroy it all with his cacophonic lyricism (both vocal and guitar).

The watchword is to make room for something that (at the time) was new, and they strongly emphasize the concept: "Newest Fastest," "New New," "Brand New," "New Fast," "New Low"... Edginess, anger, forced atonality, rhythms that aren't at all rock, but 100% wild, in search of the sound "without waves," or No Wave. The city, New York, was where, during those months, bands like Sonic Youth, Swans, or masters of symphonic noise like Glenn Branca circulated. If you will, a less intellectual response compared to that of the Europeans Einstürzende Neubauten and Throbbing Gristle, but rougher, more direct. De gustibus, I like both versions of that (short) race to musical existentialism-nihilism.

Rating it here is quite complicated, due to a series of factors I've essentially already listed: little material (yet, in 1993, this was the longest document of DNA!), and an innate fondness for Arto Lindsay and his eclecticisms (Golden Palominos, Ambitious Lovers), so I stick to three and a half to four stars, happy?