Classic
this was the first gybe/mt. zion record that i wasn't salivating over the day it came out. in fact, i was actually in a rather different mental state. i barely even registered it's existence.
the female i was living with at the time had picked it up. i thought this a little strange, as it wasn't really previously in her sphere of interest. she really liked the second record, though; perhaps i had expanded her horizons a little? then again, a lot of people really liked the second record. see, a war had just started. a social movement was beginning...
....or, at least, that's what it felt like, anyways. people that i had known for years and listened to a cross of alternative rock, reggae, funk, political rap....all of a sudden these people were picking up mt. zion records. they were somewhat shocked that this was the kind of thing i liked.
well, yeah, it was the kind of thing i liked, and the feeling was mutual. the whole buzz around the band, combined with reviews indicating a vocal focus, really scared me off. i wrote it off without ever really giving it a chance; it wasn't until a few years had passed that i went back and gave it a serious listen.
i learned a couple of things at the time:
1) when political music threatens to affect real change, the movement surrounding the music gets co-opted into just another mainstream trend and it brings out a lot of poseurs that are attracted to the music for it's trend status. they get interested for all the wrong reasons, bring their status quo attitudes in and counteract that developing movement. therefore, music cannot affect real change. what happens, instead, is that musical movements conform to their surroundings. ultimately, the sale and distribution of music is too inherently capitalistic to act as a force against it. it's a design flaw that marx missed altogether; plato was describing an effect rather than a cause. if you study musical trends before and after this, the same pattern emerges. that at least makes it easy to understand what refused was focused around near the end, even if their approach turned out to have about the worst effect possible. you can reach an audience with music, but you can't kickstart a movement that way. if we take plato more seriously than marx, we can maybe understand this music better as a reaction to the failure of the alter-globalization movement than as the start of something in itself; a resigned reaction of accepted failure, a soundtrack not to the end of the prevailing status quo but to a resigned, if scathing, acknowledgement of the end of history.
2) i'm way more anti-social and suspicious of the mainstream than even i ever realized. i always told myself i wouldn't be the type that would drop a favourite band just because they went mainstream. the thing is that mt. zion went mainstream in a way that hit me off guard. i was expecting the next radiohead, not the next rage against the machine. the scene that built up around them was full of precisely the kind of people i was trying to escape from....
i did notice that mt. zion seemed to disappear from the tips of these people's tongues as quickly as it entered them. i figured this was their ten minutes, they watered themselves down to get it, it's all over now. next up: efrim doing green day songs to play over the radio system at your local walmart, and discussion of their early work coming only in hushed tones as something that only freaks could like. fucking dark side. ugh. hey, did you know that roger waters is a trostkyist? he does a good job of sounding like an upper-class liberal. (don't get me wrong, i like most of waters' vocal work). and, what ever happened to moya, anyways? the comparison, at the time, seemed very real. i didn't realize that the actual reason mt. zion lost the buzz was actually because this is a mostly mesmerizing record that flew over most everybody's head. had i actually listened to it, i wouldn't have made such a set of ridiculously bad assumptions.
musically, the record sounds like a realization of the sound they were toying with on their previous record. spaces that would have been repetitive, nicey-nice minimalism over there have become crashing, dissonant vocal sections over here. i used to think of this as a correcting process, but in hindsight i think it's better to think of it as a culminary one. this is the first and last perfected realization of what they were initially hinting at. while the record does retain a sense of the previous one's aimlessness, it is elevated to a tragic flaw, here.
something else that's become apparent to me is that the bulk of the best material from the collective has been defined by thierry's bass work. the truth is their discography is very spotty, and i've long struggled to understand why there's such a disparity within it. that it's the bassist isn't likely something that is going to be obvious; it will likely need to be explicitly pointed out before it's realized. his bass parts only jump out in isolated places, but it seems to be that what really takes some of the collective's tracks to the next level is defined by whether or not he's driving them from the bottom end. the nature of a collective is slightly different than that of a band; he's not equally involved on every track, and in truth juggles a great deal of things with his time. this record, however, features him fairly prominently on the first three tracks, which are three of the band's most powerful.
while it fits easily onto a compact disc, this was meant to be listened to as four full-length record sides. the tracks are consequently entirely self-contained, each exploring something just a little bit different than the last. the record opens with the band introducing a vocal technique, the rondeau, which would become a central focus of their writing over the next few records; here, it is presented tongue-in-cheek as a practiced exercise. coupled with the powerful figured bass work, it gives the band a decidedly renaissance feel that very much suits them. it maybe tries a little too hard to be a little too epic, and in the process maybe drags on just a little too long. the second track is the best example of how this record sounds like a fully realized version of the last one. the minimalism has recaptured it's dissonance, and been propped up by a vocal section that better retains the listener's attention. it eventually builds into a schizophrenic romp that radiohead could have only contemplated actually constructing. i've variously interpreted the topic of the vocal sections in the middle of this record to be about missile attacks into gaza or about missile defence in canada. the vocals themselves are defined by a sort of sloganized paranoia that melds into the repetition-based writing by repeating disturbed and disturbing statements in co-ordination with the crescendos as they rise, explode and fall. the third track manages to convincingly channel genesis c. 1971 without ripping on them, although i have to wonder if the reference to weeds thriving is conscious or not. is this song about ariel sharon or george bush? are the burning children eating dust in iraq or palestine? the slow defeat of whose reckless destiny? is the malfunctioning fence the israeli "security fence" or the proposed missile shield around north america? the final track is a much less compelling piece, apparently an homage to the band's roots. it seems to signal a desire to leave the sound that is presented here behind and move forward, which was certainly accomplished, albeit with varying results. it accurately foreshadows the less interesting direction the band would take on the next few discs.
i've long had a suspicion that somebody in the band has a keen interest in the music i'm working on. i may have attracted their attention through writing that i posted to their mailing list; years later, i noticed a certain efrim (of no specific last name) following my commentary at the cbc news site. there are various moments on "lift yr skinny fists", including the cover art, that seem borrowed from some demos i had sent to constellation. there was a song on one demo called "curious george" that featured samples of george bush cut up. there are also moments on "born into trouble" that seem curiously similar to ideas i had worked out on that demo, including a section of wilderness sounds. this record continues that trend in a number of strange ways. the first half of the second track seems to be based on the introduction of a demo i recorded with a friend, called "clarity". the main riff that dominates the first track seems to be borrowed from a demo i constructed in 1999, while the processed middle section of the last track almost sounds sampled from the end section of clarity. i don't know how they could have heard these things without investigating. on later records, it would even seem as though i eventually become the topic of the lyrics. am i so vain? or am i an object of fascination? i am not making accusations, as the compositions are substantially altered and the influence is circular, anyways. further, i would rather have my ideas orchestrated and distributed than left to die in obscurity. i record this solely for the sake of curiosity and historical interest. whether i'm right or not is really now a question for historians to investigate; if i am correct, i am a person of interest to history, so, to history, i merely offer some clues.
had the disc been pared down just a tad, it would have been flawless. despite my apprehension about the vocal contents of the record, the middle two tracks are really just phenomenal realizations of vocal post-rock (post post-rock?), almost without parallel. it's not any specific track that is problematic, so much as it is that several sections repeat beyond their point of interest. while there's maybe a sense of bravery and anti-thesis in moving from a fully developed sound to a stripped down folk feel, the end result isn't particularly compelling and it ends the disc on a disappointingly weak note. on balance, though, it's a very strong disc that i'll strongly recommend, up to the aforementioned caveats.
stream:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ayayvh3eYBg&list=PLnpQFjefXCRP9CvyWjh2DUSkpe9zkE29W
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/music/artists/ASilverMtZion/2003-ThisIsOurPunkRock/index.html
