My previous exposure to ex-Henry Cow drummer Chris Cutler's Cassiber project
begins and ends with their exceptional first LP, 1982's Man Or
Monkey. Even on that album though, they seemed a strangely oil and
water affair, with vocalist Christoph Anders' (ex of German no-wavers Toto
Lotto) emphatic, declamatory pronouncements providing a peculiar, uneasy
foil for the mischievous, playful and weirdly affecting art-damaged art rock
improvisations they embroidered.
For those previously unacquainted with Cassiber's weltanschauung, the
choppy digital textures and oft-awkward sampler based sound bursts which now
flank Anders' sprechtstimme in the course of these semi-structured
improvisations (recorded just prior to their break-up in 1992) will yield
far less immediate pleasures than their debut.
More redolent of bile and petrol than oil and water, this disc resists
any sort of casual perusal. However, with persistence, the characteristics
that might
initially strike one as off-putting can attain a strangely compelling aura.
On "Come On! Start The Show!," Anders' increasingly hysteria-tinged
vocalizing goads guest saxophonist Shinoda Masami into inspired flurries of
alto-action through which Heiner Goebbels interjects cool-jazz cut-ups to
confounding
effect. Things only get more franticly fucked with "Prometheus," where
Cutler's nimble percussion scuttles around Goebbels tense electronic scrim,
only to repeatedly lurch into implosions of sense-deranging cut-ups and
strident yelping. Damn curious stuff.
The final document of Japan's Ground Zero, a scrambled remix of the
Cassiber material that encompasses the second disc is, unfortunately a total
wash, being neither a coherent statement in and of itself, nor a meaningful
reorientation of the material into any new framework. It merely sounds
scattershot. Nonetheless, a worthwhile release for the difficult music
aficionado.
(Originally published in Alternative Press #127, p.60; reprinted by
permission)
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