Panicsmile
Miniatures

Japan, so far away that, sometimes, to discover something underground coming from your lands, I have to randomly follow twisty rivers of scattered pages on the web until I forget where I started, why, how, for what reason, for when, and sometimes even why I sat at the computer. And that’s exactly what happened in this case. First, I had to remember where I was. Then how I got to these Panicsmile. Done and done: I was looking at the works of Jim O'Rourke, the reason I don’t remember. What does the good ex-Sonic Youth have to do with Japan? Simple: he lives there. Round and round, Jim ends up collaborating with a certain lady named Eiko Ishibashi, and even producing a nice little disc for her (“Carapace” which, maybe, I will review). Good. At this point, climbing a bit more up the waterfalls of the web, I discover that Ishibashi enjoyed hitting skins and cymbals in a band, the Panicsmile, indeed. We’ve arrived. So, I decide to listen to their 2004 album, “Miniatures”, and I am literally blown away.

“101 Be Twisted” starts, and everything is irretrievably crooked, tempos, intonations, rusty guitars that counter the heavy blows on the drums (Eiko, you were so sweet on the piano...), crooked voice, abstract punk. And if we continue on “Double Meaning” things get even "worse": the territories explored are those of bloodthirsty noise-rock, serving as the foundation for a heart-wrenching chant, Sonic Youth are certainly involved (but also Nomeansno, go figure), and the guitars are witnesses, and also the riffs repeated obsessively and distorted to excess, there are two guitars, they sound like 100, and you can feel it. If reading the title “Weather Report” brings to mind Zawinul and company, you are very much mistaken, because, after a tribal loop of drums, a lightningbolt-like barrage kicks in, rhythm as syncopated and nervous beyond limits, a leading riff and the rest noise demolition. And instead, if listening to “Destination Zero”, with its riff in broken times and beautifully loud guitars you think of Don Caballero, you won’t be wrong at all. Hints of “jazz(core somehow)” that gets bastardized with the aforementioned influences, adding a touch of shabby indie turning into something completely different halfway through, can be found in “Fanatic Crisis”. You’ll easily go mad with the finale “Revolution No.71” which is nothing but a cut up/mash up/fucked up frenzy of everything and nothing, video game sounds, piano, repetitive voice, scraps of music.

No sense. Yet so much beauty.