Com total exclusividade para o TBTCI, um verdadeiro momento épico nestas páginas mais de vinte anos depois o patrimônio do pós punk inglês, The Membranes que aliás já passou por estas páginas em entrevista simplesmente histórica com o monstro do baixo Mr. John Robb que você lè aqui, aterriza novamente no TBTCI desta vez por conta de Dark Matter/Dark Energy, [album duplo a ser lançado em 19/06 pela mítica Cherry Red.
John Robb e Co. simplesmente criaram uma obra intensa, caótica, perigosa e sintonizada com os fins dos tempos.
O Membranes não soa como uma simples volta como a grande maoria dos caça niqueis que vemos a todos momentos, muito pelo contrário, a verve do Membranes esta completamente intacta. Dark Matter/Dar Energy é literalmente uma dinamite completamente cercada com pólvora por todos os lados, e cuidado porque não é necessário muita coisa para simplesmente a explosão vier bem no centro do seu tímpano, aliás já na segunda faixa do álbum Do The Supernova o negócio fica altamente tenso. na sequência 21st Century Man, deixa completamente explicitado que estamos lidando com algo pouco feito nos dias atuais de música bunda mole que vemos por aí, salvo os sobreviventes no submundo dos bons sons, poucos soam tão perturbadores como o grande The Membranes.
Melhor do que eu mesmo explicar, é melhor os mestres explicarem música a música, neste track by track que antecipa a bomba que esta prestes a explodir, que venha junho urgentemente.
Música feita por gente grande e para gente grande, mantenha longe dos indie kids.
***** Track by Track - "Dark Matter/Dark Energy" - The Membranes *****
1. The Universe Explodes Into A Billion Photons Of Pure White Light
The first Membranes album for 25 years was inspired by a meeting the head of the Higgs Boson project - an in depth conversation between John Robb and the scientist about dark matter, dark energy and the future of the universe was mind blowing enough to fire the album. Of course it’s not that simple - the first track on the album is about the big bang but also sex and death in a tripped out and powerful song…
2. Do The Supernova
The Membranes trademark bass driven rush celebrates the universe and dances across the ballrooms of the endless void. Driven by a grinding bass and a huge chorus this is the Membranes dancing to the grinding neo industrial beat of particle physics and endless galaxies.
4. 21st Century Man
A nervous breakdown of a song over a grinding riff with the perfect heavy bass crank. Sometimes live this song can stretch to 20 minutes with its unrelenting ubermensch bass. During the recording of the album John Robb’s father died which affected many of the songs that became about life and death of a human being and the life and death of the universe…
3. Money Is Dust Loose
and slinky groove song - 8 minutes of ebbs and flows built around a neo- Kraut repetition fuzz bass groove, metal precision and a sticky black wah wah freak funk on the guitar (we love George Clinton although we don’t like him!). In terms of the Universe and the sheer scale of it all we are all dust - this is the politics of the surreal and how dust like human greed seems playedouot against the backdrop of the universe and the vastness of it all
5. The Multiverse Suite Joe Incandela,
the head of the Higgs Boson project- explains the universe over the membranes created soundscape behind him. The album is musically varied - this track sees a string section and the use of e-bows to create a dark and strange musical backdrop - do we believe in the multiverse theory?
6. Space Junk
Grinding post punk, space funk gunk that hits a bass driven groove as the guitars slash against the monster riff that looks at the debris of the space race and the debris of emotional skree. I Wanna take You High goes the ‘chorus’ and when the membranes mean high they mean really high…the track also sees the first appearance of the melodica a key part of the Membranes sound.
7. Dark Matter Built
around beautiful almost classical drones that are played on e-bows the song rises to a blissed out climax like a flimscore as it soundtracks the eerie beauty of the universe. The sound at the beginning of the song is the actual sound of the universe which we were given by inside sources…
8. If You Enter The Arena, You Got To Be Prepared To Deal With The Lions Biblical
imagery flashes by as the protagonist steps out into the arena of life taking the blows that come when you follow your instinct - or it could be a song about ritual and danger and semi autobiographical mashing of living undef the lights and the gladiatorial nature of modern living. It sounds claustrophobic and chemically charged and genuinely unhinged and dangerous.
9. 5776 (The Breathing Song)
The album is full of surprises. Set over a rhythm track of just breathing, melancholic string section, bows and twanging guitars and a dub bass and the atmospheric spectral strings construct a brooding atmosphere. This is quite literally a universal love song- two lovers look at the sky on a freezing cold autumn night and count the stars. They are lost in the romantic notion that all the pin pricks of light that backdrop the sky are not there any more and there are many others that we can’t see yet - in awe to the beauty of nature and the universe and each other…
10. In The Graveyard
Bring on the dark dub! the Membranes hook deep into the magic stuff, the dark dub that they are so fond of in a song about the final days of a life, holding hands and watching life ebb away is weirdly magical and heart breaking…
11.Magic Eye (To See The Sky)
Musical diversity is the key to the album - colliding a spectral folk, Rembetika bazouki's and a droning harmonium built around a drone into a song that’s about the universe being everywhere even in the suburbs where we are actually in the heart of a universe - the magic eye is the invention of the telescope and how science challenged the stuffy orthodoxy and terrified the conservative.
12. Hail To The Lovers An
outer space love song with a churning lead bass line and fractured guitars and a huge chorus…
13. Dark Energy
A song of melancholy and coming to terms with loss
14. The Hum Of The Universe
In the end we all die, everything dies, your loved ones die, the universe dies and everything returns to the hum of the universe. The song is about the violence of death and then the endless peace that stretches out for ever as the universe implodes and glows into eternity - a beautiful emptiness. The song is also in B flat the key of the actual hum of the universe and the hum of meditation as you meditate on death itself like Aghori Holy men o the banks of the ganges in Varanasi (the songs original title).
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Thanks John
https://www.facebook.com/theMembranes
