A Short Apnea

A Short Apnea with Gorge Trio

...Just Arrived (2004)

Wallace Records

At some point, after listening to way too many hip records, you may began to over-think your relationship with music. Throughout your life (and you probably know what I mean, considering you're reading a noise-rock blog) you have acquired this reputation, intentionally or not, as a person who spends a ridiculous amount of time and money on records. And because of this, certain people, naturally, looking to break the ice a bit, will ask you if you've heard the new Radiohead (e.g.), and then tell you how mind-blowing it is. Especially these days, in indie-rock's golden age of sorts, assertions like these can become so profuse, for some of us it's hard to stomach. But it's not arrogance that causes the nausea. It's confusion, really. How is it that so many people still enjoy the same brand of chorus-and-verse lunchmeat every day, breakfast, lunch and dinner? And none of us here are saying that any new trend of indie-rock is indigestible, (it is after all just rhythm and melody, what's not to like about it?) but why dedicate forty minutes of your life to some formula you've heard a thousand times before, this time with mustard?

Naturally, in time, I convinced myself I simply hated music, and that what in fact I wanted to hear was blatant noise; anything with a complete disregard for conventional structures and formulas. But a regrettable series of 'ambient' record recommendations quickly changed my mind about this. The bulk of the genre is good enough for providing atmosphere, which has it's place in any record collection, granted, but it seems incredibly unwise to spend an album's length of your time on anything that fails to engage you, or fails to require your full attention. Good records are not a condiment to your environment, or something to set a mood. They are participatory events. They are not background. Nor are they, for that matter, anything similar to the shockingly ample supply of records that attempt to sound like random, chaotic noise. Because deliberately trying to appear random or chaotic invariably ends up sounding very forced and phony. What I was looking for was a synthesis. An alloy of nothing formulated, nothing dull, and nothing forced.

To find this rare harmony of noise and patterns you have to come to the fringes, the frontier. You have to find a place of natural, unforced lawlessness. In our case, this place is somewhere in Milan, Italy, where Just Arrived was recorded in just three days. The blend is made of guitars, both electric and table, drums, rhodes piano, organ, and tapes, and takes six of the avantiest musicians of the avant-garde to achieve the proper balance. It should really speak for itself, so I won't insult it with any further explanation. Here are tracks 1-3 . Or if you feel you're not quite ready to live outside the indie-rock police-state, then maybe you'll like this album instead. (I heard it's free.)

Buy the CD.