BARK PSYCHOSIS: HEX (1994)
1) The Loom; 2) A Street
Scene; 3) Absent Friend; 4) Big Shot; 5) Eyes & Smiles; 6) Fingerspit; 7)
Pendulum Man.
Even if I hated this record and this band, it
would still be worth reviewing for two things alone. First, Bark Psychosis were
originally formed in 1986 as — get this — a Napalm
Death cover band. Second, eight years later, when their full-length debut
finally came out, their music was dubbed «post-rock» in Mojo magazine, and this
is where the term, now much more commonly associated with better known acts
such as GY!BE and Sigur Rós, allegedly had its true beginnings. To go from
«grindcore» to «post-rock» in less than a decade, and not for any sort of commercial
or fashionist decision, but simply obeying the tug of one's heart — well, this
is definitely something that merits respect.
The band itself was largely the brainchild of
Graham Sutton, a smart and sensitive kid from Hackney, and Hex was far from his first offering to the world — before that, the
band had produced several singles and EPs, including the 21-minute long track
ʽScumʼ, which gained appraisal in 1992: this really was their first attempt at
a musical «post-rock manifesto» of sorts, and the ideas invested in that track
found further development in Hex, a
collection of lengthy, meandering, and sometimes almost purringly soft...
songs? jams? textures? soundscapes? whatever. «Post-rock» was
originally defined as «non-rock music played using rock instrumentation», but
that is a vague definition — and although, in retrospect, the roots of
«post-rock» are usually seen in the classic albums of Talk Talk, Bark Psychosis
really sound nothing like Mark Hollis and the gang. They sound closer to Hollis and the gang than to
Godspeed You! Black Emperor, that is for sure. But not close enough.
The big reason why an album like Hex is revered in certain critical
circles, yet has never managed to become as popular as those Talk Talk
records, is most probably because it is unassuming.
Listening to Spirit Of Eden, you get
a very clear sense of being involved in something grand, like the early stages
of some terraforming process — the compositions are wholesome, slowly unveiling
before your eyes and aspiring to tremendous seriousness (you could argue
whether or not they actually get where they're going, but Mark Hollis' stature
as a musical prophet remains undiminished by these arguments). Sutton, on the
other hand, has no such aspirations: his music is almost always subdued, its
ambience is never betrayed by crescendos or climaxes, and if the listener needs
to be shaken up a little, well, the harshest that Hex can get is by means of some crunchy jolt from a distorted jazzy
bassline — quite a long distance, isn't it, from your everyday Napalm Death
standards?
In all, the musical genre that Hex comes closest to, outside of «rock»,
is arguably lounge jazz — with slight touches of R&B, chamber/dream pop, and
New Age. It is one of those works-better-at-night records that requires getting
into a certain lazy, hazy, dreamy mood which can carry you away; anything other
than that and most of the compositions will look extremely boring, since, you
know, this is not Talk Talk; this is a record that focuses on abstract beauty
without getting too emotional or overworked about it. «Musical hooks» do not
exist in this place — all hints at sharpness of sound have been meticulously
eradicated, replaced by smoothness and fluidity that work at a strictly
subconscious level, provided they work at all. And yet, at the same time this
is not just a collection of trance-inducing grooves: as a rule, these are
multi-part, dynamic compositions that know how to shift melodies and tempos. For
instance, ʽThe Loomʼ begins as a romantic piano-and-strings ballad, then adds
polyrhythmic percussion, then adds ambient keyboards, then drops pianos and
strings, then adds a noisy coda that may or may not resemble the actual sounds
produced by a power loom. ʽA Street Sceneʼ begins like a soft jazz piece with energetic
percussion, adult contemporary synths in the background and noisy feedback in
the middle ground — but it ends almost without any percussion at all (just a
few cymbal clicks), as a minimalistic guitar piece with some keyboard ruffles
around the edges. And this is totally typical of the rest of the album as well.
I must confess to a primitive sort of reaction:
everything on Hex sounds «tepid» to
me, too much going on for me to treat it as a quintessential ambient record,
but way too little to get me genuinely involved and moved. Had Sutton and his
backing band displayed just a tad less creativity, we could all just agree that
they tried to make a generic smooth jazz album with guitars and electronics,
and the results were predictably yawn-inducing. But the internal dynamics of
the compositions is so utterly undeniable that I almost feel bad for not «feeling»
this all the way through; the concept of the album, in fact, sounds much more
exciting on paper than when you listen to this stuff in real time. In all, this
is tons more creative than Sade, but if you were to make a desert island
choice, you'd have to go along with
ʽSmooth Operatorʼ, because Hex is
just no soundtrack for survival on a desert island.
Nevertheless, judging from a sheerly intellectual
side, the record is an undeniable thumbs up all the way through — in fact, if you
have not developed sufficient respect for it by the third listen, I would
advise coming back to it over and over again, just because it is so full of
nuances. I mean, who knows, it might actually be one of the biggest musical
riddles of the decade — in terms of how many different genres it borrows from
and in terms of the final meaning of this synthesis. It is rock, it is prog, it
is jazz, it is ambient, and it is also none of these, so what is it? And what
exactly could, or should, it trigger in our minds once the spell finally begins
to work? Count me genuinely befuddled, and I usually give out thumbs up when
I'm befuddled, just to be on the safe side. Unless I prefer to abstain, but
that usually happens with records that defy the notion of melody, whereas Bark
Psychosis have the highest respect for melody.
Hell yeah, THIS is why I follow the blog. Can't wait for the Dustsucker review!
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