Blogarhythms

After two posts in a row discussing the merger of acoustic instrumentation, electronically-generated sounds, heartfelt human emotions and mechanical bio-rhythms I wondered whether I was developing some sort of unintentional theme for the week. So after clicking “post” on yesterday’s entry I made a conscious decision to approach today’s post from a different angle.

However, after 24 hours spent with friends who heaped praise on yesterday’s featuree Milosh, and an extended argument between us over who could best imitate the signature synth riff from Jay-Z’s “Dirt Off Your Shoulder” using only our mouths I realized man/machine music wasn’t something I could just walk away from. And since Cream Cuts — the new album from experimental San Francisco-based instrumental art-jam quartet Tussle — was perched atop my stack of new releases for the week I couldn’t resist returning to the place where circuits, oscillators, modulators and filters are as instrumental to the creation of harmony and rhythm as traditional implements made of wood, brass and steel.

The deceptively lean lineup, consisting of Jonathan Holland on drums, Tomonori Yasuda on bass (with assistance from original bassist Andy “Vetiver” Cabic), Warren Huegel also on drums and Nathan Burazer (and every other member of the band other than Huegel) on “electronics,” lay down some surprisingly heavy grooves throughout the album. Drawing extensively from the lexicons of 70’s Krautrock, the Post-Punk, Art-Punk and Post-Disco the late ’70s and early ’80s, and finally the futuristic minimalism of House and Techno’s formative years, the compositions on Cream Cuts most often come in the form of abstract, disjointedly dubby Funk-Punk jams driven by stomping beats, polyrhythms evocative of both tribal percussion & the off kilter “swing” of Jazz, and intense plasticine bass grooves that bubble, melt and erupt into bursts of angular riffs.

With a sturdy rhythmic center provided by bass and drums the band is free to play about, stretching synthetic tones that come in all enveloping gossamer sheets, shocks of brightly-colored ribbon, glittering metallic strings and elasticy twines all around before dumping a bucket of shredded blips & bleeps and a whole spool of mangled loops of audio tape on top of it all. They get busy reinventing the Paradise Garage in a cramped gallery where the only “art” is the dancefloor revelers themselves (decorated by the debris of the aforementioned sound collage) and give the DFA a run for their retro Dance-Punk money on tracks like “Abacba,” “Rainbow Claw,” “Titan,” “Trasparent C,” “Night of the Hunter” and “Meh Teh.”  While “Third Party” and “Personal Effects” finds them toying with the sort of spaced-out minimalist acousmatic psychedelic drone-Jazz that would’ve made good Mercerist “meditation” music if the whole “empathy box” subplot had made it into Ridley Scott’s Vangelis-scored adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? back in ‘82.

Tussle “Rainbow Claw”

Speaking of things DFA-related, Alexis Taylor of UK DFA-affiliates and Blogarhythms favorites Hot Chip contributes to the disjointedly funky jam “Titan,” a tune worthy of his own band’s dancefloor-friendly catalog. Hell, it’d make a worthy entry in the annals of such legendary Disco-Punks and downtown Art-Punks as ESG, the Talking Heads, Liquid Liquid (who, coincidentally, have been remixed by both Tussle and Hot Chip) or experimental genius Arthur Russell! All artists, incidentally, that Tussle demonstrate ad indebtedness to in some way time and again on Cream Cuts.

The band is on tour nationwide through early October.  I have the feeling a Tussle show might be a sweaty good time.