Internal Tulips
Mislead Into a Field by a Deformed Deer
In a 2003 interview (one I conducted, one that never made it to print), infamous L.A. musician Brad Laner responded to a question about his then-brand of music-making techniques with, “It’s always been about me making more spontaneous/non-pop song music, using whatever interesting technology I have around at any given time. Mostly (technology) exists as an excuse for me to learn new methods of working… it’s my woodshed, basically.” A gleaning of his career – from the Birthday Party-esque Savage Republic to shimmering distortion maven with Medicine to plug-in-gutting drum ‘n’ fragmenter Electric Company to post-rocker with Christopher Willits and their North Valley Subconscious Orchestra – validates this statement; Laner has always operated with a “he mixes that with that?/hey, it works” style, forging adept, attractive work several degrees removed from and ahead of trends.
Paired with former Savage Republic partner Alex Graham (aka Lexaunculpt), the duo makes exactly what Laner describes: broken singer-songwriter almost-coffee-house folk skewered by manipulation, a musical puzzle whose missing pieces are filled in with glue, scraps of paper and pencil sketches (similar to Broadcast, though lacking the melancholy and heavy Italo-psychedelics of that band’s aesthetic). For “Bee Calmed” Laner’s reserved John-Lennon meets (The Byrds’) Gene Clark lead and harmonies seals a combination of dusty panning piano, fey vocoded and time-stretched robot utterances, stunted cinematic swells and choppy bursts of random gurgles (popping in and out like tape-edits). Similarly, IT laces the otherwise straight-forward harmonic progression – and an actual guitar solo – of “Mr. Baby” with crumpled, thudding bass drums, camera-click glitches and an orchestra of found and home-made synthetics.
On paper this reads as an overwhelming piecemeal mish-mash, but the duo target meek source material (i.e. harps, acoustic guitar), the dynamics rarely rise above bashful, and the editing wizardry is transparent and relatively timeless (the album could be now, or Morton Subotnik circa 1967).
Your so-called exploration of the latest version of “Live” should yield such sweet results.
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