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Il dono della sintesi si acquista con l'esperienza. E' con questo monito che mi accingo a scrivere la mia seconda de-recensione. Ma...ma....il cantante rappa!? Frasi lunghissime?!..Enjambement a non finire?!...Un unicum da ascoltare tutto d'un fiato?! E come si fa ad essere sintetici così.
"For Hero: For Fool" (2006 @ Lex Records) seconda fatica del collettivo di Oakland nato dalla mente malata dell'ex cLOUDDEAD-ex-Themselves-ex-un-po'-tutto Dose One (minchia se non fosse un'eresia lo paragonerei a Mike Patton per le sue innumerevoli partecipazioni, non da meno quelle con BoomBip "Circle" [2002 @ Mush] e con i Notwist "13 & God" [2005 @ Anticon]).
Un teatro ma non un teatrino. La rappresentazione scenica unita ad uno dei flussi di coscienza più incomprensibili mai partoriti da mente semi-umana (impressione confermata dai loro Live, assolutamente drammatici, recitati). Il primo lavoro dei Subtle aveva piacevolmente impressionato ma sembrava una versione meno schizzata di Ten dei cLOUDDEAD (leggetevi l'ottima recensione). Qui i ragazzi prendono la loro strada, se ne vanno di corsa. Veloci... no, velocissimi! Impossibile inquadrare le tracce di quest'opera che si avvicina a molti generi ma senza mai farli propri,irridendoli.
Elettronica o acustica, campionata o suonata, parlata o cantata che sia, la musica dei Subtle colpisce duro...allo stomaco...difficile da digerire subito.
"C'erano una carota ed una scimmia... entrambe sul palco", l'inizio degli inizi. Il pamphlet dello spettacolo. Silenzio in sala che a far rumore ci pensano i Subtle. La sezione ritmica, tiratissima, a volte non riesce a star dietro alla iper-rapida lingua di Dose One il quale utilizza vari espedienti per recitare tutti gli attori dello show in un Petroliniano camaleontismo. Dalla finta allegria e spensieratezza dell'inizio si scenderà molto in fretta verso terreni più scomodi. La traccia iniziale è composta da 4 pezzi fusi insieme.
"A Tale of Apes I" e "A Tale of Apes II" sono come Dott. Jeckyl e Mr. Hide in acido e ad un rave. Disco Trash.
"Middleclass Stomp" è il pezzo più scenico dell'opus in cui il linguaggio dei gesti è l'unica forma di comunicazione chiara e canonica. La strumentazione è sfruttata al massimo con chitarre acustiche e ritmiche, violoncelli elettrici e sax. Manca solo il direttore d'orchestra... no c'è... è Jel, con i suoi pad elettronici, a dettare i tempi.
"Middleclass Kill" si apre con un duetto di voci ed una batteria soffocata per poi uscire dal sonno in un girotondo di refrain e tastiere.
"Midaz Gutz" è rap-noir e decadente.
"Nomanisisland" è una ninna nanna in falsetto, ottone e stringhe, il pezzo più lento e riflessivo.
"The Mercury Craze" unico singolo dell'album è oltremodo immediata, con un beat secco e una delle schitarrate più pacchiane mai sentite...il kitsch al servizio dell'ironia...."What if your blood weren't you?" canta Dose. Assolutamente comico lo spot radiofonico posto a fine brano a sottolineare che alla resa dei conti la pubblicità è l'anima della music... ehm del mercato.
Non ci sono schemi, stili o stilemi (mazza la rima...Dose, ti rubo il lavoro) che i nostri non tocchino infettandoli e la sirena all'inizio di "Bed To The Bills" sembra l'unica cura....l'internamento forzato.
"Returne To The Vein" è un escalation di toni in cui il flusso delle parole è bruscamente interrotto da 2 minuti di vaneggiamenti prog e ripreso per i capelli alla fine, per miracolo.
Addirittura "The End" si permette di durare 8-minuti-8 e ripetere uno per uno tutti i generi usati nel disco... troppo pretenzioso per essere vero... eppure... vogliamo chiamarlo Extreme Crossover? Facciamolo!
E' la chiusura del sipario, gli attori escono, fanno l'inchino, gli spettatori se ne vanno quasi minacciati da un improvviso quanto triste pianoforte (al primo ascolto pare che il cd salti) e una coda da skippare (volutamente, come si fa al cinema? Prego l'uscita è da questa parte).
Un disco ostico per orecchie ostiche, pieno zeppo di autocitazioni, neologismi, campionamenti e salti d'umore, in puro stile Dose, in puro stile Subtle. Non rimarrà nella storia, la storia se la fa da solo.
P.S. E' uscito da poco il nuovo lavoro dei signorini qui recensiti: "Exiting Arm" che, appena lo avrò digerito, recensirò.
Elenco tracce testi samples e video
06 Nomanisisland (04:20)
So much for beating your indoor chest
stood predator star,
never picked only placed before doors.
Do you not now know what you poet...
holding your breath arms akimbo
stood base thinking in flames of yourself
at the manned gates to fair switzerland's brink...
would you fancy say going solo forever instead.
Setting sail for good on a standard stranded man crafted raft,
equipped with nothing save few-hundred euros and the hypocrite inside you...
lost where life is all but perfect,
taking the longest cut across wide open ocean possible.
razor free and limeless on a never-again bent to kiss land tour...
...
and if things go well...
you might harvest plankton from the rotted raft's rope
for your supper, and for fluids take twice from yourself
a handful of urine sipped to grind spit.
In shark free waters you could paddle with your hands and feet for fun...
tipping her over if a rescue plane coasts overhead...
and at night feel for the moon making moves,
forcing form on your un-mastered and visible quarter mile of ocean.
And by day on your back watching birds
appear then dissolve in mid-migrate.
falling from a distant nowhere to an out of sight,
still looping in a starring role they'd played
in what's our early evolution...
and there you are sprawled out below them,
fast forgetting tenth grade physics
floating on a few killed trees tied close together...
Hi up above you
in a hollywood-set-style heaven
beyond two floors of sky,
and another 5 of inner-most outer-space
hang awake darwin's bones.
wheeled on a hook to the edge of a cumulous cloud.
peering down just, eating you up
and loving your nature to death...
And there you'll be,
lain prostrate chipping salt
from your lips with starvation soft teeth
sprawled out in the way of the sun.
You see no one truly cares if you take your bloated backpack,
big bag of tylenol, and the long way never into switzerland...
poor poor stranded and big gigantic poem man...
You have what sleeps inside you for your certain string of moments,
and its un-plan thereafter only for your done & once sensitive skin...
07 The Mercury Craze (04:40)
When last we left him...
our hero yes was recently diagnosed as being last haver
of a most unusual sort of blood.
quite surprised by the news himself,
(and still the genuinely unlucky man)
he now wields his one and only body bag
of this, his now very rare blood.
and so, we find him seated not starved but smalled,
before a really rather serious spread...
his evening's eats have been copped and bequeathed
by the richest of rich who's only child is especially sick...
their fair scared parent eyes reading weak...
yelling help across some 200 feet of set table
yours far full of edge... perfectly still like straight teeth
It seems so few would know just what to do as the new and improved lucky you,
to be courted and prized as someone else's very own personal blood mine.
I mean...What if your o-so unique blood... then became the latest craze...
would the dear disparate world not get the wrong/right idea,
You...now owning all your ever so happening blood...
You...sole proprietor of all that priceless red wet...
What if...
What if your blood were then all the rage...
What then...
What if your blood weren't you...
What would you give
in order to get your hands
on the latest most luxurious blood...
to have yours flushed completely
and replaced with that of a nice bright white
college boy or very viral multi-millionaire widow...
Would you later pay extra
for your old red tide to be glassed,
sat down, room warm beside your occupied hospital bed.
so that when you were well,
and in your right mind of redwets
and new whites. You just might
indeed, spill your own & old blood.
can't you hear your mercury just
ringing with the jingles already...
hey fool,
is there a terrible time to your life that never seems to let up...
is it a terrible time of the great nothing much...
what say you leave your past life's luck in the dust...
and let the miracle most of modern day at your blood...
(under the age of death)
(complementary bag of aspirin)
(imagine, Ice Cube's blood, running through your veins)
08 Bed to the Bills (04:50)
the next day
the exact same nurse is standing with her back to me
at every last passing bus stop.
only this time, what looks like a small stack of bills
with bat wings, is hovering just beside her.
they're bound together by a narrow wishbone,
beneath it rests a large bowl full of some indistinct fruit.
waxen looking still, atop a three quarter length corinthian column.
To the left is a rather fit "right" woman's left leg,
buried thigh deep in the hallowed and wood-chip topped bus stop grounds.
the planted lady's leg looking clean shaven and hot
sweat beading up about its calf in the black avenue amplified sun
an eye blue high heel jut in full bloom on its visible end.
and so you get off...
to find two suits arguing silent
before a double-parked and obviously unmarked cop car.
the blown-up head flesh of two big business men, a-hover above them.
a good foot or two of twine dangling from their tied off throats,
running down into their hollowed dress shirt collar mouths.
you over hear them mutter something serious about...
"the second hand emotion"
and then comes something like semi-poetic directions...
" a ways down commerce...then turn, dead straight into ashe" ...
and so you walk...
predicting all possible presents in ever to bits, and back
from the bed to the bills you see nothing
but pit within pit within pit, an undeniable feeding on you
and more this...
...
A honey smothered hand gun all covered in ants,
trembles on a three quarter length corinthian column...
10 Call to Dive (07:08)
The lids on Streetlights peel back
to reveal row upon row of bulging black bird eye.
all gorged out toward you like exotic zoo snakes
heaped up on fiberglass rocks,
fat with farmed rats coaxed down their throat...
below them in their brights,
tilt finished arrows beached up on thin tin signs.
and where its corrugated stem injects into cement
there is a deep fried breastbone,
popping hard half ate on a rich red curb...
all at once,
this moment has no mercy on your color find eye's
stole blues version of oakland...
as you make for thin ice on your you on you violent night.
the next morning everything begins again over a walk,
past a few balloons tied to a lovesick car-salesman's wrist.
you press on...
a soft bicycle wheel chained up
behind a savage looking pair of women's dress shoes,
abandoned to the left of a tire tread pressed dead pigeon
lain askew in more rich rose colored gutter.
there...there...
temperature taking your skin,
tinged city wind catching air
on your pleasantly imperfect and c-section shaped skull.
For once forget your headed to the mailbox
to drop more finished bills down to its gut...
even though for all you know...
that's about as far as those things ever go.
as sad as it is so,
kids today will never wear the perfect cape of clean air.
nor one true brand new brazier of sheer luck...
or does someone out there still expect that...
the way a moth gives freely of itself unto the bulb.
they will not learn their lesson from a teachers copy
of a blackened lung, hung in the classroom, on the coat rack...
or left dripping in the closet during math minutes passing.
nor from a nice new globe made of gold, cast in the shape of a half eaten apple...
not until...
the sun is on a stick.
the moon hung on a hook.
desperate times call for step by step schematics of the human dive.
The end...
(one mile of week&will later)
a sunset interjects.
donating the kind of red you only see in stores.
affording yourself a bit more reality,
some singular mood polarity .
If you could, you'd have a close friend
drive you off into the sinking pinks.
Carico i commenti... con calma
