Rodan

Louisville. The US in 1994. Post-rock. The reinvention of hardcore. The only manifesto of a sonic evolution worthy of standing alongside "Spiderland". Except that Slint were Slint. And they'd got there first. And that time, seminal deconstruction won out over deconstruction written with pure ardor. And yet "Rusty" keeps on defeating time (just like its protagonists did), thanks to that blend of violence and restrained unease, pragmatic schizophrenia and visionary reach beyond hallucination: an uncompromising work that completes a systematic devastation, illuminating the way as it lays the definitive foundations for a future that, at the time, was almost already present.

Kevin Coultas on drums will be the only one of the four about whom little will be heard in the years to come. As for the others, history will speak for itself: guitar and vocals for Jeff Mueller (June Of '44, Shipping News), guitar, vocals and piano for Jason B. Noble (Rachel's, again Shipping News), bass and vocals for Tara Jane O'Neil (Sonora Pine and Retsin, besides her solo career). Overseeing it all was Bob Weston who, with Shellac of Steve Albini, would go on to scatter Rodan's thousand fragments across math-rock territory. A single album (rounding out the discography are the 7" "How The Winter Was Passed" and the EP "Aviary", both from 1993, plus a handful of compilation appearances) destined never to have a follow-up, because everything, in that moment and for that moment, had already been written across the six tracks in question. In just under three quarters of an hour.

The opening of "Bible Silver Corner" is a deception born of desolation. A long, drawn-out passage steeped in the same poetic delicacy that nowadays a band like Explosions In The Sky would recreate. Arpeggios, ethereal repetitions, acoustic caresses made tangible by false crescendos: it's an atmosphere thick with rarefied anxiety, ready to implode on itself, moving through a narcolepsy that isn't yet compulsive, but already aware of the fury to come. Then comes "Shiner", curiously short (around two and a half minutes) and all the more exhaustive for it in unleashing an uncompromising violence, with screams stripped of any restraint, surrounded by an endless, excessively violent electricity.

The mind inevitably goes back to Squirrel Bait, and yet, alongside Slint, David Grubbs's Bitch Magnet is perhaps the most fitting term of comparison, thanks to their abstraction of a notion of song tied to the rage of Big Black and steered toward more conceptual territories. "The Everyday World Of Bodies" gives this idea its definitive shape, superb in merging the opposing traits of the first two tracks and finding, not absurdly (as will become clear later), a precise balance between calm and storm. The song's twelve minutes are paradigmatic: from the alternation of screams and spoken word to the build-up of extreme tension, first asserting itself, then dissolving, and finally reforming with the same passion. And this is the thread running through the second half of the album: "Jungle Jim" opens with Tara's anguished vocals before erupting into a post-hardcore inferno that tolerates no variation: an overwhelming urgency that once again must curl back in on itself, gripped by an exhausting neurosis, not unlike the most dissonant moments of Bastro. And while on "Cauge" the structure tends to be more compact and less shifting, favouring a bewitching charm that loses little in abrasiveness, the closing of "Tooth Fairy Retribution Manifesto" is as good as it gets: utopian chimes give way to an incestuous relationship between crescendos, distortion and whispers, through an obsessive, incredibly real emotional intensity.

With "Rusty", Rodan captured the essence of an entire musical era, crafting an essential album not simply because it stands alone. As important as Slint, yet utterly different in approach. Essential listening for anyone who wants to fully grasp not only the later developments of the post-rock phenomenon (and here a nod is due to June Of '44, the only band worthy and deserving of being called their true heirs), but also the meaning of a revolution that, twelve years ago, a handful of musicians managed to articulate with extraordinary effectiveness.

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08/11/2006