Music Blogs

Dub Me Silly Batman: Since their materialization some four years ago, Brooklyn instrumental boffins Dub Trio have used their name as an inside joke, a clever diversion, a reason to fool listeners and annoy critics. While they do play classic dub in certain instances, mostly on their debut, 2004's Exploring The Dangers Of, Dub Trio 2008 sounds more like Black Sabbath and Helmet whapping your head with a skillet than King Tubby or Lee Scratch passing the big spliff in Jamaica. Dub Trio's latest, Another Sound Is Dying (Ipecac) does it all, sandblasting '70s styled metal (via '00s Pro Tool precision) with a subliminal dub feel. It's hard to put into words, much less to be sure of, but Dub Trio have located that unique middle ground where the attack is all sweaty, militaristic and storm trooper defiant, though when you dig deeper, that dub feel is still in there somewhere, gumming up the works and providing rat-like elasticity.

About six songs into Another Sound Is Dying, Dub Trio unleash rhythmic fury in "Regression Line," a song of super speedy riffs and rage, then suddenly drop back into a half-time feel, but with no dub sensibility whatsoever. That the dub is in there down low seems to be enough; that Dub Trio's heads are addled by too much testosterone/metal intake makes it all the more mad. The album keeps it close to the bone: big armed metal epics presenting a clash-of-the-titans atmosphere, tracks like "Fu** What You Heard," "Jog On," "Who Wants to Die?" and "Punishment" putting me in mind of fun flicks like Hostel 2, or an alternate release from German vocal cripplers, Rammstein. Can balladic metal get any more weepy and sensitive than "Respite?" Or more reflective and angst-y than the whispered vocal slo-mo dirge of "No Flag?" Dub Trio keep the rhythms taut and mangled--our heads cracking and necks snapping.

"Bay Vs. Leonard" traces a prog/dub path, oddly enough, DP Holmes (guitar and keyboards), Stu Brooks (bass and keyboards) and Joe Tomino (drums) zigzagging between Mighty Morphin circular patterns and stone cold dub fractions, the appropriate delay pedals and hi-hat figures drop kicking your gut like a New York City taxi driver intent on killing us all.

Dub Trio: "Bay Vs. Leonard"  (MP3, 3:22)

Arp's In Light: After Dub Trio's hedonistic riff-o-rama, the soothing tones of Arp's debut In Light (Smalltown Supersound) allows the good feeling endorphins to flow. Fans of underground electronic act Tussle (remember 2006's excellent Telescopic Mind?) will rejoice over Arp's mind melting analog frivolity, as both acts are the braintrust of one Alexis Georgopoulos, a San Francisco based writer, artist and musician brought up in France, Greece and the United States.

Not a groundbreaking release by any means, In Light does successfully pursue ancient synth scapes as originally created by Tangerine Dream and Ralf and Florian (of Kraftwerk fame). Most tracks offer simple blips, bleeps and pedestrian rhythmic patterns, the sum effect like the soundtrack to the first orbit of the earth by astronaut John Glenn, or was that Laika, the Russian pooch turned cosmonaut? With animals currently receiving human-like status by most love starved Americans, I think we can safely say that dogs are astronauts too.

Back to the plot: Encouraged by Artforum critic Matthew Higgs, Alexis spent a period after departing Tussle improvising with hackneyed analog synthesizers, pulse machines, flute, piano, guitar pedals and an old 4-track cassette recorder.

Smalltown Supersound label founder Joakim Haugland took on exposing Arp's meditative electronica (Georgopoulos calls it "Natural Electronic Music") as his personal mission, and signed the Grecian musician on the spot. The label's subsequent press release described In Light as "a vivid world of enchanted, elevated psychedelia that touches upon his love of everything from the 4th World explorations of Alice Coltrane to the Kosmische side of '70s Germany, from soundtrack music to 20th Century Minimalist composition."

Not a bad description (except for the Coltrane comparison), so why not use it?

The release of In Light will be followed by a 12" single with remixes by Panda Bear and Cluster. Additionally, Arp has also remixed a track by Charlotte Gainsbourg, to be released by Vice Records.

Okay, get blasted, then get sleepy.