EXCEPTER - Sunbomber

Recorded in a single hour, during a hot afternoon in June

2005, “Sunbomber” is a kind of pocket primer on the art-rock experimentalism

of the New York band. Just under half an hour of music, built entirely around a

continuous, dynamic refraction of minimalist reiterations and sonic variants

that often rinse themselves in the sulphurous swamps of

electro-noise. Small, not particularly finished universes, yet

sketched with a firm touch and close attention to the smallest detail. That's why,

then, beyond the near-extemporaneous nature of the recordings, what

emerges is a formalism that betrays a well-considered overall vision and

structured.

Deep down, the same ambient matrix that pervades

the whole album reveals the band's clear intent to achieve an

effect of eerie lightness, at once hypnotic and faintly numbing. A

play of microscopic, electrostatic refractions among narcotized voices,

simulacra of melodies and cotton-candy space (“One More Try”). Electronic

modernariato that seeks the calm of a tormented sound, forced to

endure radioactive jolts (“Second Chances”) and to hysterically shed

processed emotions. On the fringes of this snapshot of a wounded New York, forced to

reckon with itself, slide Casio debris and liquid

digital fragrances. “Bridge Traffic” thus opens onto a dopey, self-indulgent chant.

Perhaps too much so. A primitivist, ramshackle form of

song, like a nonsense spreading like an oil slick. An alien little game,

like that of “Dawn Patrol”, with ever more menacing contours. Plastic

matter, this sound. Forced to endure us. Almost a secluded place where one can

project our consciousnesses, as if onto a screen.

It's the white and

the black of our sensations. And Excepter choose to work precisely on

this chiaroscuro dialectic. Voids and solids. Zones of shadow and sudden

wisps of light that blur and scatter, interpenetrate and

drift apart. Streams of consciousness of tortured synthetic musicality, of which

there remain small shards of melodicism for the slow-witted, pollutions like sonic

trinkets in videogame style. Solutions that represent a first analysis

of their research (as the long, "cumulative" agony of the title

track makes clear), certainly not a definitive statement, as some have claimed. In

any case, if the outlook remains wide open onto the future, for now

"Sunbomber" is essential listening for anyone wanting to stay

up to speed.

Ride the wave of great music

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19/12/2006