Teledubgnosis - Magnetic Learning Center
Ted Parsons has gone all soft on us. No, that's not quite the right word. He's gone vaporous. Ted -- who has drummed for Prong, Godflesh, the Swans and Foetus (a list which certain denotes a heavy thunder of sound) -- has a new project, Teledubgnosis, and he's gone an infinite distance from the sonic thrash of grindcore and noise rock. Released on New York City's Wordsound label, Teledubgnosis' Magnetic Learning Center is a heavy weather collection of dub landscapes.
Teledubgnosis is the combination of Parsons, Jason Wolford, and Gregory Damien Grinnell. It is Grinnell's trumpet on 80 Creeps that lends a Nils Petter Molvaer flair to the drifting ambience of the track. In fact, the whole song sounds like a recently discovered track from Molvaer's Solid Ether record with Bill Laswell working the mixing desk. While Parsons lives in Oslo, Norway and Wolford hails from New York City, Grinnell lives in Boston where he does a number on the multi-media art scene, providing bizarre footage to accompany electronic musicians. He gets a bit of a brass workout with ska band The Toasters and is also involved with hip-hop/reggae crew The Unity 2.
Wolford was the guy behind the Technics 1200s for the Decadent Dub Team (based in Dallas, Texas, during the 1980s and 1990s). Since moving to New York City, he's been exploring the outer fringes of his home studio working on dub and musique concrete material. His passion for outrageous home-made instrumentation provides some of the stranger sounds for the record.
It's an eclectic bunch that has come together for Magnetic Learning Center and somehow they've managed to meld all of their disparate backgrounds into a layered, textured sound. Teledubgnosis is Jamaican Dub; it's electronic world music; it's static bombardment of lost radio shows from forgotten islands; it's Adrian Sherwood's On-U Sound hog-tied to an overdriven drum machine. It's ambient dub metal riddim.
"Some|Thing" is a dub nightmare of a deserted factory. Everything would be covered with dust if it weren't for the thick mist which pervades the endless rooms. The echoes are wet and cavernous. Piano notes drip like fat water drops from broken pipes. "Close to the Fire" has the extra bass echo of Crooklyn Dub's Tony Maimone (who actually appears on three track all together) and his fat sound thickens the atmosphere being kicked out by the others. "Heading West" has a flowing rhythm like the sound of new car tires against old pavement -- the click, click, click of the miles passing beneath the wheels. Add in a ghostly spaghetti western guitar (with just a touch of Eastern twang to it) and you're lost in a road movie of your own making.
By the fifth track, I've made two notes: "kick out the jams" and "stoke up the bong." Both are true. Neither are absolutes. It's that sort of record. "Industrial Dub" seems like such an oxymoron that I'm not sure it can be used, but there is a charged energy which pervades even the reverb. By its name, Teledubgnosis implies an obscure science, an occult mystery of sound which is not only practiced only by the rare initiate, but it should only be heard by the chosen elite. Get initiated. The Mysteries of the Magnetic Learning Center are waiting for you.
Teledubgnosis
Wordsound [2003]
music
The alphabetical list below provides navigation into the review archive. To view a comprehensive list of all reviews available in the repository, click on the infinity symbol (∞) in the last box of the series.
Regarding materials for review, I can be reached at:
music@markteppo.com
Links
Review Archive
| A | B | C | D |
| E | F | G | H |
| I | J | K | L |
| M | N | O | P |
| Q | R | S | T |
| U | V | W | X |
| Y | Z | # | ∞ |