Staff Reports
Arizona Daily Wildcat
January 22, 1998

Music Meltdown

Unsane

Occupational Hazard

(Relapse)

Be afraid- very, very afraid. Unsane is here and ready to solicit your daughters and torture your pets. Listening to the 'acclaimed' hard-core trio from New York feels somewhat akin to someone bashing you round the head while you're having the biggest hangover of your life. Add in a healthy dose of grinding teeth and pounding metal and you have this hardened monster of rock and their latest release, Occupational Hazard.

The first track, "Committed," starts with true '80s-style noise and remains harsh on the senses for the duration of the track - so does the rest of the album. Most people wouldn't last through a listen to the whole CD, and having a headache on my first try made it a painful process, one which I would never wish upon anyone except for the three nimrods at the helm of this unsettling album.

The artwork on Occupational Hazard is very clever and mature, a steel column covered in blood with an eerie mist in the background. One might be compelled to ask how the blood got there. Perhaps someone was simply painting the yellow column with a new shade of red and forgot to finish the job, or was swallowed by the scary mist (hopefully, for his sake, before having to listen to the album).

It's not really worth commenting on every individual song as each one is very similar to the track immediately before and after it. The songs have no catch to them and come off, for the most part, as simply overly bland and mundane. Ultimately, the music is similar to other hard-core bands (Neurosis, Brutal Truth etc.) and is an acquired taste.

Unfortunately, there's no accounting for taste.

-James Casey

DJ Shadow

Preemptive Strike

(Mo' Wax)

DJ Shadow is one of the best there is at making modern audio soundscapes, using samples from every dark corner of vinyl history. What sets him apart from other hip hop artists is that his music is composed entirely of these samples. Preemptive Strike, his latest release, is a compilation of three Shadow EPs that were previously only available in the United States as imports.

Strike contains the 12-minute urban trip "In/Flux," and "High Noon," the fast, rock influenced new single, as well as all four parts of "What Does Your Soul Look Like." Parts one and four of this sequence, and a variation of "Organ Donor," can also be found on Endtroducing, DJ Shadow's debut full-length. So, Preemptive Strike is a bit of DJ Shadow history, a way for fans only familiar with Endtroducing to get better acquainted with the turntable olympian.

Josh Davis, a k a DJ Shadow, talks a lot about plot and foreshadowing in his music; to have all of the "What Does Your Soul Look Like" tracks helps it all make sense: Part two starts out with a classical trumpet and flute sample and continues with a haunting female chant. Part four starts out similarly, only with a male voice, and later, in part one (which is actually after two, three, and four on the disc) you can hear the female voice again. Even though each track is different, they all seem to evoke the same mood, and the echoes of a bass from another track links it all together.

For a limited time, the album also comes with a bonus disc, Camel Bobsled Race (DJ Shadow Megamix by DJ Q-Bert), a 24-minute remixed montage of classic Shadow.

-Annie Holub

Lush Budget Presents The Les Payne Product

Lush Budget Presents The Les Payne Product (Aviator)

How do I love this duo that's got Phoenicians all abuzz? Let me count the times I've listened to this record since purchase, four days ago: 14. As many times, I've been amazed that The Les Payne Product manages to create so much music with only four hands. Then again, they are aided by an array of instruments: keyboards, kazoos, and lots of whirring, buzzing little noises that fill out the sound. Throw in the musical telepathy between singer/pianist/guitarist Himes and drummer/singer/keyboardist Thoob, and you have a record that fits in somewhere between Ween's Mollusk, Sgt. Pepper's and Puccini's La Boheme.

Quirky, discordant, structurally complex - all words that have been used to describe The Les Payne sound. Basically, this record rocks.

From the first bars of "We are the Monster," this release unravels as an involved work, more the product of sessions of inspired jamming than any prefab notions of how a song should be. "At the Rodeo (Fireball)" is a story of love lost, at once jubilant and desperate, an example of Les Payne's ability to fuse romper-room aural assaults with a lyrical voice that is fiercely personal, at times heart-wrenching.

"It's Nice To Have You Here (5 Minutes Ago)" weaves an angelic vocal harmony into the last 20 seconds of an otherwise "rockin'" song, possibly blowing any chance for radio superhitdom anytime soon. And therein lies the Les Payne rub: just when you think you've got it, it changes, doubles back on you. This may feel at first like a betrayal -repeated listens, though, reveal a challenge well-worth taking. ( Aviator Records, PO Box 40865, Mesa, AZ, 85274)

-Laura Bond