LFO - Sheath
I got a cassette tape promo of LFO's new record, Sheath, and it stopped me in my tracks. I had to remember if I still owned a tape deck. While I tried to remember where the deck was, I wondered why Warp -- who normally send out their promos as CDs -- sent out cassettes this time around. And then I saw the video for "Freak," the lead single from the record.
The video, for those who haven't gone to Warp's website and watched it, tells the story of mischievous young girls at a school in Japan. After locking the headmistress in the bathroom, one of the girls approaches the stereo in the head office and switches the PA system from the microphone to a stereo input -- to the cassette tape, in fact. The girls playing on the roof are blasted with music as the first girl pops in an unmarked tape, and they start to dance. And -- subtly, creepily -- things start to get weird.
I'm looking at this tape on my coffee table, feeling like I've just been dropped into Warp's version of Ringu, and I'm wondering just what is going to happen to me when I play this tape. Will my face start to stretch, centuries of evolution sliding backward as I shiver and twitch about the room to the shuddering metallic beat of "Mokeylips" which scrapes its way out of my stereo? Will the furious beat breakdown of "Mum-Man" turn me into a raging baboon? I'll tear off the legs of the coffee table and go all 2001 on my sofa during the tumultuous and cataclysmic climax of "Snot."
When LFO (Low Frequency Oscillation) formed in 1990, it comprised of two members: Mark Bell and Gez Varley. After the release of Advance in 1996, the two parted ways with Bell retaining the name. Since then he's been busy on the production side of the desk, working on Björk's Homogenic and Depeche Mode's Exciter. Sheath is his first record in a long while and is full of the acid house foundation which "LFO" (the first track the duo ever wrote) was born in, as well as the successive decade or so of Aphex Twin style knob twiddlery which set the direction of so much electronic music. The complex mechanics of "Blown" and "Unafraid to Linger" transform their respective wistful melodies into textured symphonies of electronic expression. Beats bubble and dance beneath glistening arias of sound and melody (there are even some double-reed instruments which wander into the mix of "Unafraid to Linger," drawn by the Dionysian fervor of the fairy melodies). Whether he's poking the monkey part of your brain with snarling pulses of spastic beats or guiding the child in you towards the light, Bell has a penchant for tunes that will challenge the intelligent and delight those who come to IDM for the dancing.
I have to turn the tape over now (yes, I did find my tape deck). "Freak" is on side B. I'm still concerned that I'm going to be permanently altered by this song. The opener to side B, "Sleepy Chicken," has a lonesome guitar surfing around in the background behind the 1950s style "we're all happy here" theme music. At least it was a guitar. Now it has morphed into something stranger, something that has teeth and likes to chew on power chords. I think my ears are starting to slide down to my jaw line.
"This is going to make you freak." These are the only lyrics on the entire record. These are the only words you will hear on Sheath. This is the message, not so subliminally pumped into your brain. "Freak" is like Aphex Twin storming the studio of the minimal techno-heads in Berlin. There's a perpetual four on the floor feel to the track, but it gets lost and fucked up by Bell's mastication of the melody by any and all methods available to him. And then it all drains away and I shit through "Mummy, I've Had An Accident..."
Hmmm, I meant to say "sit." See? It's that low frequency oscillation. It's Bell, turning me inside out as I try to dance and sing to songs that have no vocals and aren't meant to be danced by the recently erect knuckle-draggers in the audience. I hear voices where there are none in "Nevertheless" as a looped cello is transformed by a persistent melody into a fully orchestrated duet, and the closer, "'Premacy," is a love song to deep space noises -- sex music for quasars and pulsars and other celestial bodies.
I've gone from regressing to my ancestral beginnings to staring at the night stars, imagining that I am light years across so that I can wrap my arms around the Crab Nebula. This is what that unmarked and innocent looking tape of Sheath did to me. Your mileage may vary, but I hope not. Bell puts together a good trip.
LFO
Warp Records [2003]
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