BARK PSYCHOSIS: INDEPENDENCY (1989-1992; 1994)
1) I Know; 2) Nothing Feels;
3) All Different Things; 4) By Blow; 5) Manman; 6) Blood Rush; 7) Tooled Up; 8)
Scum.
For the serious patient of Bark Psychosis, this
is an indispensable addition to the two full LPs. Independency is a compilation, released in 1994 (the same year as Hex) and collecting, in roughly
chronological order, most of the stuff from their several singles and EPs from
1989 to 1992, altogether more than an hour of post-rock bliss in a state of
growth — starting off with the early «naïve» singles (that's what Sutton called
them himself) and culminating in the 21-minute ʽScumʼ, the track that literally
put Bark Psychosis on the map and paved the ground for the less monumental,
but even more elaborate compositions of Hex.
Indeed, the band's first single often feels as
if they were just so excited with the possibility to lay down some trippy
sounds in a professional studio — ʽAll Different Thingsʼ is really all about
the miracle of phased guitar effects, looped and echoed off each other during
the fussy free-form coda, and ʽBy Blowʼ, true to its name, explores the idea of
how cool it can be when a soft, smooth, lulling New Age soundscape is gradually
transformed into a messy nightmare "by blow" of the reverberating
power chord, gradually gaining in intensity and frequency, until the Talk
Talk-ish air is ripped apart by almost John Zorn-ian sound bombers. But it
doesn't sound particularly professional or grappling — in fact, Sutton later
admitted that they distorted the tapes in the process and didn't even notice it
until it was too late. (Not that you'd ever guess that the wobbly sound of the
track came by accident, rather than artistic decision).
Pending their second single (ʽNothing Feelsʼ /
ʽI Knowʼ, for some reason placed here before the first one), the really
interesting stuff starts with the Manman
EP — the heavily rhythmic title track shows a clear techno influence, but is
still imbued with Sutton's usual melancholy and some astral psychedelics: the
guitar-dominated parts are similar to The Cure, but then they get swapped for
keyboards, and it sounds like somebody wanted to record a completely digital
track, but ended up recording the synthesizer parts manually — in other words,
an oddly «homebrewn» version of whatever the real pros in the techno genre were
doing, but also somewhat endearing because of that factor. The most curious
track of the three, though, is ʽTooled Upʼ — also rhythmic, funky, and it seems
as if they sampled the bassline from Talking Heads' ʽCrosseyed And Painlessʼ
for this! Hardly a coincidence, even if there is hardly anything else in common between Bark Psychosis
and Talking Heads.
As for ʽScumʼ, this is indeed like a 20-minute
preview of whatever Hex would soon
be, and as such, somewhat superfluous — there is no serious reason for it to go
over 20 minutes. In fact, there would be no serious reason for any Bark Psychosis track to go over 20
minutes, unless you accept that the nature of their music is totally static (which is not true) and
you just have to treat it as background musical incense. But historically, one
can easily see how this was a sort of milestone for «post-rock»: the freedom
of a psychedelic jam combined with the vague influence of the classical
symphonic form and, in the case of Sutton, also with a strong jazz vibe. There's
a little bit of everything in this track, and they make an adorable job of
reducing it all to Nothing (with a capital N, which means respect, if not
adulation).
Altogether, this is not a particularly
tremendous line of evolution — one would hope for one of those early Napalm
Death covers, but no dice! — but it does reveal several somewhat different
incarnations of the band before they settle into their classic image, and, most
importantly, there is absolutely no telling whether any of these tracks might
strike a hidden chord in you: I'd say there's a big chance of a random music
lover connecting with at least one, which sort of justifies paying one buck for
this compilation if you happen to find it for such a price. But if you're one
of those rare Suttonites who think that Bark Psychosis combined breathtaking
beauty and deep intellectualism like no other Nineties' band, Independency is the required third
shard to complete the Holy Grail of Proto-Post-Rock.
PS. And yes, that's not a bootleg cover - apparently, the band's name was in Cyrillic letters on the cover of the original compilation. It does look suspiciously like a Russian bootleg: I wonder if the band members had access to any of those, or were they simply influenced so much by Paul McCartney's so-called Choba B CCCP?
If if was it probably confused a few Russians
ReplyDeletewhat's a Psehkhosez?
Nah, it's an accurate transliteration. Except for the "З" at the end; no clue why that was substituted for "С".
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