Jackson & His Computer Band - 'Smash' (Warp)
4/5
By: Thomas Hannan
Wake up and smell the digitally enhanced coffee, all you analogue loyalists - electronics have been central to the making of music for aeons. Somewhere along the line, you have to plug something in to something else, and turn it on. So why continue the prejudice? It's small minded, basically. We think more of you than that. Here's a little something that might interest you.
It's not only the Amish who will have problems with someone openly admitting that their band, well, doesn't actually exist. Gorillaz get away with it through the medium of those cute little cartoon types, but explicitly stating that your band only exists amidst the circuitry of some piece of technology will make many more of us be inclined to believe that this is just some bloke messing around in a bedroom. It probably is just that, but that's perhaps what makes it sound so playful and carefree. Bedrooms have been the start of great things, including most people you and I know. Don't dwell on that.
On close examination, 'Smash' isn't a particularly easy record to get along with. It's intricate, lengthy and rambling. Maybe the world's not ready. Or conversely, maybe it's just what it needs. It's the kind of thing that restores your faith in human nature, the fact that genuinely good records really do seem to get the recognition they deserve even if they are a little peculiar. Not only do we cope with the bleeps of 'Kid A' or unstructured noise experiments littering 'The White Album', we applaud them even louder for their daring nature. So is it something to do with the current climate that means this probably won't thrive?
If so, a climate needs creating, one where this can at least have a chance to be respected beyond the underground. It seems to fulfil all the requirements for something to be hugely popular, just in a slightly skewed style. When it's the sole focus of your attention it has a tendency to come across as a mess, but slipping out of analytical mode and relaxing in your own idiocy towards the genre at hand, you find it's possible to enjoy this incredibly complicated music in a very simple way. Think deeply about it if you want, there's enough to keep you from twiddling your thumbs. But what's clever is that you lose none the pleasure by just letting it do its thing, and paying it little more attention than the tap of a foot.
Generously, the quirky electronic fumbles and interwoven beat patters are interspersed with genuinely catchy moments, the opening duo of the heady 'Utopia' and almost-but-not-quite pumping of 'Rock On' are as accessible and probably as uncomplicatedly enjoyable as this gets, but they certainly lure you in. Start with the child-read monologue of 'Oh Boy' and it'd be tougher to allow yourself to let go, but since we're already in shoulder deep, you might as well dive further. When in Rome, and all that...
The trick of interspersing the nuttiness with something most customarily pleasant continues ablaze, 'TV Dogs (Cathodica's Letter)' occasionally aping Daft Punk at their most bass obsessed, 'Teen Beat Ocean' is wonderful nodding music, and 'Tropical Metal' makes you wonder how a title can be pretty nonsensical and yet somehow apply brilliantly to the sound that's being made. Vibrant. A little tinny. There's a song called 'Hard Tits' on it too, which is pretty funny, no?
Eventually, it lets go of the need to keep the listener entertained, assuming if they've come this far they're in for the long haul, and the last third of the record does become very much like one long, exploratory passage, where melody does not exist and nothing is as it seems. Computer bands seem to have their advantages. There are no creative boundaries, you're always in tune, no inter-band squabbles, no chance of ever breaking up over musical differences. Put some wanted ads up on internet message boards, see if any lonely PCs reply. If 'Smash' is anything to go by, it could be the start of something majestic.
Artists in this article: Jackson & His Computer Band
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