A. R. Kane

Picturesque names, those of Alex Ayuli and Rudi Tambala. With their ganja-scented allure, they seem tailor-made to titillate the (sad) fantasies of the generic, mainstream music consumer, perhaps convinced that behind such exoticism there must necessarily lurk spectral rastamen chained to the mixing desk, condemned to pound out ab aeternum the pulse of a “100% Jamaican-style” soundsystem. It's hard to imagine that these obscure figures, in reality multi-instrumentalists from London's East Side, were labelmates (on 4AD, let's not forget) of the Cocteau Twins, as well as the inspiration and direct forerunners of much of Albion's post-rock. It's even hard to credit the banality of certain sections of the British press, usually masters of creativity when it comes to coining flashy genres or nicknames, who at the time found nothing better to do than shove them into the “proto-shoegaze/late wave” cupboard and rebrand them “black Jesus And Mary Chain” (!). Given the peculiarity of their musical proposition, Her Majesty's scribes could have had a field day: dream-dub? Narc-psych? Trip-wave? (fantasy genres “invented” by yours truly on the spot, so feel free to ignore them… and let's hope no one already holds the copyright). One thing is certain: if Bark Psychosis, Disco Inferno and Seefeel were the “Lost Generation”, A.R. Kane were its great, unsung prophets.

And yet Ayuli and Tambala did have their fifteen minutes of fame. It was August 1987, and the release of the 12” “Pump Up The Volume” – the fruit of a fraught partnership with labelmates Colourbox – catapulted them into the headlines (not to mention the charts) as pioneers of the “sampledelic” revolution that was soon to sweep through the world of dance. That's how it looked, at least: in truth, the lucrative M/A/R/R/S interlude kept the project's two souls firmly distinct, almost split in two, so much so that our heroes' contribution to the legendary “collage” hip-house of the A-side ended up being limited to a few guitar overdubs folded into the mix. But anyone who bothered to flip the vinyl over (note the sheer primal nature of that gesture) was destined to stumble on something far stranger. Essentially an A.R. Kane solo exploit (though Steve Young, a member of the “rival” group, had a hand in programming the rhythm), “Anitina (The First Time I See She Dance)” was music's negation of phenomenal concreteness, a gastro-psychedelic reflux in which dream-pop stepped outside itself (and looked back at itself), fusing with a crudely-hewn beat, distant arpeggios, sing-song vocals and noise mist. Something unheard of for the time. Already “post” something.

The splendid single “Lollita” (4AD, July 1987) followed the same path too: applying the noise equivalent of “sfumato” to a canvas of indie and wave fragments. Handling sounds like paint smeared by childish fingertips, or angel dust suspended in mid-air, the duo reached a level of sophistication that was perhaps unprecedented. “We're after something more abstract than the verse/chorus/verse formula. Our songs emerge from total chaos, which we then calm down to let a melody surface. Essentially, we want to use melodies to suck listeners into the chaos.” It's impossible not to think of contemporaries My Bloody Valentine, at least going by the protocol that calls, first and foremost, for the clouding/ecstasy of the senses, falling back on white noise mixed with the “median” appeal of pop discourse (what a sly, irresistible way to sugar the pill!). But let's not torment ourselves by thinking of clones just yet, since the differences between the two bands remain vast. One of them – the fundamental one – is worth dwelling on: method.

In Kevin Shields's band, the “blankets of sound” are meant to undermine perspectival points of reference, thereby causing the spectrum to occlude through sheer material density; in the recipe perfected by Ayuli and Tambala, on the other hand, the pursuit of trance produces the paradoxical effect of “opening up” spaces and building, through a mosaic of relationships – even chance ones – between elements, a three-dimensional sonic environment (essentially, the typical dub procedure). This is what Simon Reynolds called the “democracy of sounds”: an agglomeration in which no single source imposes itself but instead coexists, on equal footing, offering nothing more than a vague impression, a faint trace. Music as a “system”, then, where every constituent element has no reason to exist except when inserted into a dense web of exchanges and power relations. “We listen to a lot of jazz, stuff like Miles Davis's ‘Bitches Brew‘ and ‘In A Silent Way‘, or early Weather Report“, Ayuli explained, and now we understand why. Davis, Shorter and Zawinul: three of the “old sages” that post-rock's biggest nerds will turn to for advice when grappling with problems of development and texture, often getting more than satisfactory answers. Funny how it all comes full circle.

Too many people look at “69” (Rough Trade, 1988) with the characteristic disenchantment of someone holding an album that's more influential than beautiful. Let's dispel any doubt about the truth of that first claim: “69” really was influential, as much as almost any other artifact of its time. That said, it's only fair to also reassess, on a purely aesthetic level, its bouquet of fragrances: that unrepeatable mix in which dub, pop, electronics, minimalism and rock instrumentation drown peacefully, eyeing the ascetic limbo of Talk Talk's “Spirit Of Eden” and foreshadowing a thousand other things (not least, 90% of the entire Too Pure catalogue).

“69” (a title that's anything but ascetic, mind you…) is a sonic arabesque in which stasis beats physicality 20 to 0; a psychedelic prism of inertial bliss (the immortal “Dizzy” and its demure, spotlit cello), with only the torrential “Suicide Kiss” already striking a pose for the more “masculine” side of shoegaze (Catherine Wheel, Swervedriver, Revolver). Keeping time are guitars perpetually (and wonderfully) torn between chiming chords (“Sperm Whale Trip Over”, the most “Cocteau-esque” of the bunch) and malevolent droning, arpeggios and neurasthenic noise (the congealed gothic murk of “The Madonna Is With Child”). Ayuli's voice follows suit with disoriented melismas, twisted lullabies: a voice that exudes a Blackness sickened with anemia, fragile and feminine, a vehicle of pure perception.

Pop innocence shaking off indie retroactivity, “Crazy Blue” heads resolutely toward dub-Caribbean flavours, deploying a bass so melodic and jazzy it brings to mind figures of the calibre of Phil Lesh (Grateful Dead) or Chris Hillman of the Byrds. “Baby Milk Snatcher” outdoes it further still, in a deliciously aquatic stroll of female counter-vocals, off-beat beat and keyboard “staccato” as soft as sponge cake. Almost a half-asleep Lee “Scratch” Perry, if that image appeals to you.

All critical judgement, however, goes straight out the window when what erupts are pure enchantments like "The Sun Falls Into The Sea", "Scab", the phlegmatic caprice of "Spanish Quay (3)" or the unsettling free-form drift of "Sulliday": here A.R. Kane truly place themselves not only above theoretical disputes (“this is post-rock, this other thing isn't, this other one might be, if it sounded more like Slint”), but beyond any tangible point of reference other than – I'd venture – a convergence of ambient, the Hendrix of “1983… (A Merman I Should Turn To Be)” and the psychedelia of the drowsiest David Crosby.

There's no development, no narrative, only texture. Of dream-pop, only the sense of temporal suspension and magical wonder remain: that sediment of intoxication produced in the lab, overusing delay, reverb, harmonics, muddy little bubbles à la Robert Wyatt. Dreams, bordering on nightmare.

‘69’ isn't simple, at least not in the sense most pop music listeners give to the word (i.e. “immediate”): it caresses your nerve endings right away, but it doesn't settle in instantly, and the downloading process demands patience. Yet it pays off. The currency – incredibly enough – is precisely the exponential drop in interest for the record itself, at least until fascination with the process gives way to empathy with its “visceral” dictate. Because this isn't just music of concepts and structures, but also and above all of desire, of (ab)negation. Music “too pure” to survive outside of headphones, the only context in which one can appreciate its dialectical finesse, its attention to detail (and this is music built exclusively on detail). It isn't made for the outside world; it doesn't even seem to be the result of a physical act like actual playing. It slyly merges in symbiosis with the body. It survives by camouflaging itself within the heartbeat.

With ‘69’ the synopsis of ecstasy reaches its point of no return. Ayuli and Tambala must have realised this too, judging by the deliberate fragmentation of the following album. A more dynamic work, with a markedly “rock” feel, yet schizophrenic in its alternation between fully-formed songs and micro-shards of nonsense, “i” (Rough Trade, 1989) seemed like an implicit refusal to keep fusing the different souls of their sound. Or maybe the two were actually trying to push its ambiguous veneer to the extreme, well aware of the congenital ambivalence of an art form that preaches innocence and spontaneity while wallowing in sophistication; an art born of impure impulses, yet fundamentally self-reflexive. Borrowing the terminology coined by anthropologist Gregory Bateson regarding the “family system”, one could almost speak of a “double bind”: an explicit assertion contradicted or concealed by an analogical – and therefore implicit – communication, which leaves the interlocutor (the listener, in our case) in a state of total uncertainty about what to do. It is, in fact, the inability to choose between two mutually exclusive options that here leads to a state of impasse, of paralysis (what, in J&MC parlance, is the burst of white light capable of “pinning you to the ground”). Many didn't know how to react to A.R. Kane's music for the simple reason that, put on the spot, they couldn't do otherwise.

Of course, one could object that the double bind presupposes an affective relationship between two subjects… But what is pop music if not a (double) falling in love? And what is its enjoyment if not an exchange on multiple levels (verbal, visual, emotional), a “do ut des” between two distinct subjects, mediated by the work (the object)? The thread of self-contradiction – and therefore not merely the wish to move beyond rock, but the insistence on the gap between means and end, medium and content – pulses through A.R. Kane just as it does through much of post-rock, even the strain based on the Louisville-Chicago axis. It's as if most of those bands wanted to tell you: “Look at us, look at our instruments: we're a typical rock band!”. You believe it, and then they launch into George Antheil's “Ballet Mécanique”! Faced with such a contradiction in terms, what's the point of moving at all?

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06/09/2009