Sister Machine Gun - Influence
Chris Randall's Sister Machine Gun project is back for its seventh full-length record and he continues to live fast by two rules: evolution is necessary, but the funk can never die. Called Influence, his latest record takes his sinuous, guitar-laced, industrial-tinged lounge act through a portal in time to the electro heyday of the synth in the late 1980s.
From the electro beatbox of "To Hell with You" to the drum 'n' bass clatter and hazed vocals of "The Antagonizer," Randall is all about turning his retro-industrial lounge act into a Ball of the Beats where it is all hot pants, crushed velvet, strobe lights, a ceiling full of spinning disco balls and a relentless insistence on shakin' yo ass. That most of the songs are bitter ditties to be sung along to by the broken-hearted and emotional bereft is the best kind of icing to this already delightful cake. "I would have done anything / To never say good-bye / I would have done anything for you."
He pauses the headlong rush for an intimate session of electronic drum kit and wandering guitar with "Clean." It's a very Depeche Mode collides with Jeff Beck sort of session with Randall's world-weary crooner singing, "I go to the river, but the river don't wash me clean." It's a ballad where the sad song of the guitar is just as much a part of the lyric as is Randall's voice. It's a song you will know when you hear it; it will speak right to the black blood pooling at the base of your heart, that dark blood which carries all the things we've done that we don't ever want to face. Fantastic and heartbreaking, it lies right at the center of the record's spiral funk universe. Perfect.
It's been over a decade since Sins of the Flesh, the first Sister Machine Gun record, and when you look back at the SMG discography, you can see those elements which indelibly stamp a record as being a Sister Machine Gun release. The group has gone from being a full-on band to just Randall to being Randall and Miguel Turanzas, and what remains constant is the angry and disaffected crooner and the insistent funk of the melodies and rhythms. Each record applies these constants to a different shell, a different temperament and outer instrumentational casement. Influence throws itself deep into the electro-mix of the 1980s and pulls off its retro-vision with a broad streak of 21st century sensibility. Randall pauses at the threshold of his second decade as a performer for quasi-nostalgia tour of the formative sounds of his youth, and demonstrates that he's got nothing but the future in mind. Excellent, as always. Give me another decade, please.
Sister Machine Gun
Positron Records [2003]
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