Bisk.Strange Or Funny-Haha? (Sub Rosa) 1997
Bisk's second full-length album for Sub Rosa is both strange and
funny-haha; strange in its almost unprecedented fusion of vagued-out
electronica (electro, experimental hip-hop, left-field drum'n'bass...but
all of these only barely) with everything from manic bop and Zorn-esque
post-free jazz to avant-gardist loop'n'splice tape massacre and
plunderphonic sound collage; and funny-haha...well, for much the same
reason. Hyogo-based Naohiro Fujikawa's extreme methods of
genre-obliterating abstraction are so warped and smeared that sometimes the
only thing you can do is shake your head and laugh. However, like its
predecessor, last year's =Time=, =Strange= lurks in shadows, its restless
buzz approximating the paranoid fidget of a schizophrenic battling a radio
dial. As suggested, some of these tracks are probably more adequately
described as sample-based free jazz (except that they usually have some
sort of recurring structure...often only barely perceptible, but it's
there), with massively tweaked and distorted (but also quite clean and
extremely well-produced) textures providing the basis for the music, not
the more conventional synth patches, lfo/vcf modulation, and percussion
sounds and patterns associated with 90 percent of dance-based electronic
music. Recent Atom Heart (_Built_, _Brown_, _Hat_) and Elfish Echo's _Sato
Yumiko_ are still the closest touchpoints, but Bisk is arguably more severe
in his approach, with clangy, often noise-based rhythmic structures adding
a sharp, threatening edge. Oddly, the whole thing remains damn funky, as
well, and miles away from the soulless sampleblurt noodlings of yer Jon
Oswalds, Ground Zeros, etc. Think maybe David Shea crossed with the Black
Dog, shitfaced, wrestling with Rakim and AMM on a bullet train outside of
William Gibson's Tokyo etc. "Experimental" does not even come close.
Rating: 9
CD1. Tuning
CD2. Convergence
CD3. Rolling And Pitching
CD4. Momentary Stir
CD5. Rhythm And Blues
CD6. Chattering Jazz
CD7. Viscosity One
CD8. Gamelan
CD9. Viscosity Two
sc
p.s. Failure to release albums like this on vinyl should be considered a
punishable offense...