Multiphase 1982 & 1984 / 2024
Out-Pop Options /
Any Questions?
Celebrating the four-decade anniversary of their sophomore effort, American polymaths bundle up and expand the beginnings of it all.
When this ensemble sprang "Elements Of Surprise" on an unexpecting audience back in 2022, the album lived up to its title and sounded fresh enough to fool many a listener into thinking that the artists behind it joined forces to create a supergroup, which couldn’t be further from the truth. Apparently, the veterans themselves sensed such a shift of popular perception – and, therefore, felt the need to remind their new fans of the actual facts: of the band’s first two platters, issued in 1982 and 1984, when a lot of detailed seen as showing influence of the collective’s forebears now should have seemed original. More so, there’s nothing retro about the sonic palette on offer, especially when previously unreleased cuts are factored in.
Yes, the signals-emitting “Yellow Samba” which opens the band’s debut record can come across as an epistle from the past, Carl Weingarten’s guitar weaving harmonic lines through Walter Whitney’s synthesizer waves and Reed Nesbit’s electronica, yet the result of their effort is a slowly built sensual tsunami rather than essay on the possibilities of ether resonance. Sometimes this exploration of texture feels relentlessly cerebral, with arresting details getting added to sonic perspective of “Questions?” outtake “Fictionmusic” while its insistent, Fripp-inspired loop is rearranging the listener’s brain grooves. However, such fierce arrives contrasted with faux-new-age aural imagery of the magnificently ambient, folksy “Kites” which could be a lost chapter from a JADE WARRIOR album of the same title if, of course, DELAY TACTICS wished to refer to that English ensemble. What they do reference, unapologetically so, is a German master of the dance, although there’s enough Krautrock and musique concrete in “Chasing Moroder” on the group’s first album. Here’s the reason why the easy-to-dismiss under-the-minute “Trio” on their second, and the slightly longer “This Time” on the other one are so important: not because cosmic snippets of spoken word land in there to expose the artists’ human touch, but because their percussive and melodic elements almost amount to musique concrète and reveal the scope of the American composers’ creative spectrum and Eurocentric slant.
Diving into the bonus of “Initial Opus” might be a risky, if riveting, endeavor yet this cathedral-fitting epic, not quite characteristic for Carl and company, presents a further key to the collective’s subconscious. Never mind the psychedelic, pseudo-8-bit superficiality of “Five PM Expressway” that picks up where “Autobahn” left off and pulls “Pterodactyl” from the next record in its wake to find David Udell’s six strings dancing around Weingarten’s licks, or the muscular bass and serrated riffs of “On The Roll”; the cinematic creepiness of “Le Noeud De Viperes” is where the deceptively abstract action is, as stark dynamics steal the scene from clean tunes like “Cymbolia” that follows it, and both studio and recently dusted-off, crazier concert variants of the unhurried “Rommie Dancing” bring on a rave frenzy concocted before the lysergic get-togethers existed. No wonder, then, in pop engine driving “Hands On Fire” towards avant-garde, and in the Balearic frivolity of “Oysters” that get high on Joan Bouise’s vocal polyphony and leads into the adventurous harmonies of “On Green Waters” and beyond. With the double-axe-sculpted “Almost Touching” drawing on raga, and acoustic guitar rendering “Woman In A Room (Of Colors)” exquisite, the overall result will border on rapture.
And with “Big Sound” being extremely catchy and “Funk Tune” nigh on mind-boggling, the mesmeric “Ms Witchdoctor” and the spaced-out “Car Crash Jam” – all another smattering of bonus tracks on the two-CD reissue – only emphasize how revolutionary this ensemble’s oeuvre could have been if people cared to capture those sounds. Having stood the test of time, it still is as impressive.
*****
