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Blonde Redhead - Atmospheres of 23

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By: Alibastard | in: Music |

For me, Blonde Redhead inhabits that current realm of music that makes me think of The Future. The Future, capitol The. I should specify: The Cool Future. There’s this reverb wall of sonic echo that imbues their mild rock and roll, a feature akin to a lot of the heavy drone behind exhalant TV on the Radio. The Subdued Future. The Future – Capitol “The”, shaking from contained emotion. Not without rhythm, but with boomy backgrounds that blanket the entire experience, shaking the air with a low thunder, nearly on the verge of taking over on the one hand, and nearly invisible on the other. In the opening of 23, this melancholy, dissenting hum loudly wavers like a lawnmower the size of a Fifth Element studio apartment, not completely unlike the industrial breath looped in the opening of “Playhouses” on TVOTR’s Return to Cookie Mountain. In Redhead’s “My Impure Hair”, nearly space age whistles resound from guitar amplifiers, offering texture that nuzzles a moody tomorrow rather than an angsty grunge yesteryear. There is an ethereal sense of drowning in circuits, of becoming one with wire and electric noise, of angels surfacing from a polluted, gothic darkness.

Blonde Redhead

For whatever reason, TVOTR and Redhead both project a kind of silver fog from their music, something riveting and human within a techno-loneliness, something antiquated and cast into the world of Tomorrow. Some continuation of a Radiohead aesthetic maybe, watered down by the Coldplay pretenders and brought back to life again as technology grows new animal instincts. So perhaps: the Lonely Cool Future it is - one where our machines begin to hum the sounds of our restless bones, making some approximation that almost makes them seem alive.

Blonde Redhead - 23

In some ways, TVOTR and Redhead couldn’t be more different themselves. But both represent a sort of international melting pot (Blonde Redhead spanning Japan, Italy and Canada, TV on the Radio Africa and New York), which is perhaps why their sounds conjure a Future moment, an impassioned point of cultural convergence yet to happen.
But there’s something more. The sounds of both these bands, and even some of Arcade Fire’s more electrically cathedral moments, create a sonic feeling of scale, of towering skyscrapers that dissolve seamlessly into misty heavens, these heavy overcast moments polishing some far-away memory of where we live now.

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And despite all my own fantasies about The Future from these warbling, breathy moods, memory seems to be the major preoccupation of its content. Something highly personal, and having nothing to do with something cultural or global or Futuristic at all. It unfurls with a sad nostalgia, the title and cover seeming to allude to a time of some overwhelming young game – where two sets of legs (or maybe two vaginas) are leading around lead singer Kazu Makino, or whatever female personas have been chosen to represent her experience of desire, longing and sadness – most of it from the emotionally rich soil of Past experience.

TV on the Radio - Playhouses

Showing less of an appetite for restless rhythms and changes in mood the likes of which graced Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons, 23 has entered the realm of the personalized Future, booming, melancholic and sometimes angelic, following the territory the band explored in Misery is a Butterfly with a new complete surrender to atmosphere.

Blonde Redhead - Top Ranking

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMH1yFQFj5I


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Posted on June 26, 2007

Comments

2 Responses to “Blonde Redhead - Atmospheres of 23”

  1. Alex on June 27th, 2007 8:57 am

    I saw them perform on Conan one night - I downloaded their album immediately after. They are the perfect mood music for a chill night; they present an ambience that encourages a relaxed state. Although, they seem to be a little repetitive in their sound, and I would like to see them expand their style a little more.


  2. Charbarred on June 27th, 2007 11:35 am

    They used to be a noise band (a la Sonic Youth), so their current albums are an expansion of their sound.


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