Royal Trux

Degenerate, drug-addled offspring of the most warped and diseased strain of rock, wayward descendants of the most visceral and rotten blues, Royal Trux (Neil Hagerty, ex Pussy Galore, on guitar, and Jennifer Herrema on organ) managed with "Twin Infinitives" to pull off the feat of demolishing thirty years of rock, which from that point on became irremediably "mutant" and, whether people like it or not, truly "post-".

It's telling that this epoch-making revolution (still, it must be said, without any concrete follow-through...) was set in motion by a decisive and yet programmatic return to origins; to the Rolling Stones, to be precise: the band with whom rock finally came of age. The fact that the "rolling stones" themselves were in turn children of blues and primal rock'n'roll only goes to show how every true innovation-revolution is really just (?) a matter of standing more firmly on the shoulders of giants. So if anyone has murmured the name of Robert Johnson (or indeed other great bluesmen of the early days), let them step forward and explain what lay behind those crooked, strangely irresolute chords; behind that half-sung, half-spoken delivery so full of suffering and life. Perhaps they might also concede that, deep down, the blues (the real thing...) is Munch's scream duking it out with the musical staff...

The blues, of course; the very thing that indissolubly links the Rolling Stones, Captain Beefheart, the Cramps, Pussy Galore... in short, the most explicit influences on the Washington duo transplanted to New York. And yet the Royal Trux would be inconceivable without the spatial, mangling cacophonies of Chrome, the bleak, icily expressionist landscapes of Faust, the electronic torture with which Pere Ubu detonated garage rock, the skeletal, bloodthirsty chaos of no wave, and, if you like, even the industrial psychoses of Throbbing Gristle.

In essence, it's as though Hagerty and Herrema, approaching the sacred mystery of the blues, discovered that any "radical" reinterpretation of it must reckon with every subversive development that the devil's music, disguised as rock, has undergone over roughly thirty years of existence. And so the blues inevitably became "other" than itself, filtered through a thousand genres and a thousand registers. This "otherness" is brought to fruition (that is, revealed) by "Twin Infinitives", an incredible, monstrous, outsized work: irreparably... a milestone.

How is this "otherness" worked out? How does the duo carry out its (atonal, dissonant, "primal") deconstruction of rock? Well: where Pussy Galore had stopped ("Dial M For Motherfucker", 1989); where Sonic Youth, in trying to reinvent rock (by reinventing its principal instrument, the guitar), had at a certain point ("Daydream Nation", 1988) been forced to "surrender"; where even Slint themselves (unwitting fathers of "post-rock", anything but "post-", isn't that right, Simon Reynolds?) had "merely" (read between the lines...) shifted rhythmic and/or timbral centers of gravity (which, whatever anyone says, never managed to dismember the "song form"): well... there, with the leer of a rabid vampire, Royal Trux kept on tearing at the carcass, vultures circling in an already far too dark sky.

In practice, the pair reshaped rock along unofficial coordinates, drawing "excessively" on elements historically considered "secondary": noise (anarchic, straight out of the Faust manual), atonality (in the most "abstract" sense of Arto Lindsay), dissonance, (non-)rhythms, lo-fi electronics, and so on. They then further rattled this substrate with nauseating injections of "junkie" and "sci-fi" culture, while carrying out, in parallel and almost absent-mindedly, their filthy, diseased revisitation of the blues, whose original existential "spleen" was transfigured into a current, "extreme" form of nihilism. In practice: if, as Hagerty states, "Twin Infinitives" is also an attack on consumer society, then that attack is necessarily carried out along lines that reveal themselves as destructive and nullifying. But that's only one side of it: Hagerty and Herrema had in mind a work that, on a sociological level, would prove not only highly "subversive" (I'd say "terroristic", rather) but, above all, capable of imposing new figurations of existence: the (Joycean) "Yes" to Life. Here is what Hagerty has said: "At the same time this record was an 'anti-escapist' message, addressed to spiritual rather than material well-being, a message in favor of open-mindedness, solitary meditation, and a generally positive (yes, positive!) approach to life. But this, of course, requires complete dedication on the part of the listener, a genuine rediscovery of the work of art and, consequently, of the world to which that work refers.

The highest level, finally, consists in the pseudo-structuring of the elements described above. This too unfolds in successive stages. First of all, there are the pre-existing forms that remain in the background and serve as creative input: usually, ramshackle guitar chords, listless moans (a kind of sub-human singing), off-the-rails drum-machine loops, and sonic junk pulled from the organ or synth. The subversive use of electronics, combined with the disintegration of rhythm, then intensifies this sonic collapse. It's a "pulverized" electronics: "seminal" in the loosest sense, to borrow a term dear to Art Informel painters. And "informal", at bottom, is the whole of their operation.

Let's dwell now on the main purpose of "Twin Infinitives" (as Hagerty himself has stated); namely: to push the art of rock composition to its most extreme limits, so that it's still rock'n'roll, yet can no longer be recognized as such. Indeed, the sonic surface seems to derive from an "original" structure that has been blown apart. Except that the fragments have been reassembled in overlapping, and above all non-coinciding, layers (which entails an "abstraction", a digression that generates the most paradoxical, but also the most formally revolutionary, sonic events — take, for instance, the case of "Chances Are The Comets In Our Future"). Within each of these layers one can make out "planned" sequences and "improvised" sequences. In any case, just as happened in the freest works of Ornette Coleman, the different sound sources tend to organize themselves (apparently?) freely, rather than according to relations of force. One could apply to Royal Trux's music what Charles Mingus said of Charlie Parker's: namely, that it's a very particular species of "organized disorganization" (in short: "composition" and "improvisation" end up overlapping).

All this pervades every single track from top to bottom, as is already evident from the very first seconds of "Solid Gold Tooth", a scorching blues (!) forged from the violent coupling of a malfunctioning video game, disjointed dueling voices, and a radio news broadcast; the whole thing steeped in a dense fog of irregular sonic events and worn down by a dark, rumbling bass regurgitation.

In "Ice Cream", a duet of metallic strings, out of tune and stretched to breaking point, provides counterpoint to Herrema's imploded vocals. The heap of rotten sounds spraying in every direction surfaces in infinitesimal, at times jittery, discharges. A psychedelic keyboard phrase is kept off to the side, like a faint glow behind an impenetrable forest.

The sticky drum-machine loop in "Jet Pet" is traumatized by the tremulous distortions of the six-string, which spreads out, metallic and convulsive, over Herrema's vocal delirium. Other guitar parts are mercilessly dissected and haphazardly glued onto the tape as it rolls by.

The percussive chaos of "RTX-USA" reveals glimpses of a "metaphysical" flute, lacerating guitar chasms and a "chemical" pulse that fades in and out of this colossal "free-form freak-out", so merciless and abominable that it would make even the "best" Red Crayola blush.

The blackest and most incomprehensible nightmare, however, is "Kool Down Wheels": against the furthest wall, hisses, nuclear radiation and muffled clangs gather in clusters. A sinister organ traces its trajectories above Hagerty's vocal line, much like the wail of a derelict caught amid raging atomic miasmas. It's a hyper-distorted, subliminal variant of the "psychic" industrial music of Einsturzende Neubauten and Factrix (whose influence is especially detectable in the harmonic backdrops torn apart by powerful schizophrenic outbursts). Another name that comes to mind is the Californian Chrome, particularly for the tectonic segmentation of the rhythmic ruptures.

Herrema's voice returns to sow chaos on "Chances Are The Comets In Our Future", a track that slowly tears itself apart as its sonic surface is progressively eroded by the usual disruptive elements: hisses, feedback, otherworldly wails, overlapping and dissociated pre-recorded parts, tonal violations. What makes the Royal Trux method even more ruthless is the naivety with which they attack both the planned parts (broken down into ever smaller fragments) and the parts improvised in the studio (which later undergo a treatment akin to Burroughs' "cut-up"). This process, of course, produces scraps, musical waste, evidently set aside. Yet I don't think there's much difference between what's used in the arrangements and what's deemed unusable. The choice is dictated purely by an iconoclastic impulse.

Delta blues echoes through the abrasive guitar of "Yin Jim Versus The Vomit Creature", complete with Hagerty's unintelligible mumbling. It's like witnessing an "electric", "industrial" remake of Captain Beefheart's "China Pig".

Astral hisses, circular dissonances, harmonic crashes and metallic reverbs invade the magnetic field of "Osiris", detonated by the neurotic spatiality of the six-string. This is no longer rock music. It's "abstract sound-painting". It's Jackson Pollock grappling with noise-rock.

But "(Edge Of The) Ape Oven" is the album's absolute masterpiece: over 15 minutes of psychedelia set amid blazing pits of free-noise. The first 2'24" rank among the most brilliant and deranged things rock has ever produced: over a schizoid carpet of drum-machine and assorted percussion, an immense cosmic flotation rises up, Cluster-style, complete with a harmonica shimmering in backlight; here and there, amid the piano chords, faint hints of free-jazz appear; meanwhile, as the harmonica keeps babbling wordlessly, Hagerty's voice is filtered through a warped lens. It's merely the prologue to the guitar delirium of the next 12'11". Amid rumbling and lysergic echoes, Hagerty goes straight down his own path: the guitar stubbornly repeats sequences of fiery chords, takes flights of fancy, builds and develops supersonic riffs, plunges into Hendrix-like universes. The few adrenaline surges it allows itself are seasoned with blazing, free-roaming dissonances that echo the apocalyptic thuds intent on incinerating the backdrop. In the finale, those sustained notes, aimed at the most menacing and inaccessible crevices of the cosmos, reveal that Jerry Garcia's "dark star" is still out there, wandering in the void... Despite everything.

"Florida Avenue Theme" seals their cacophonous bent with barely a minute of metropolitan claustrophobia. The dark, hyperrealistic backdrops that enveloped Vega's delirium in the legendary "Frankie Teardrop" by Suicide take over completely, becoming the track's sole purpose and only sound source. As if that weren't enough, the recording favors not one but several "points of view" (following Charles Ives' most innovative insights). It's the culmination of their operation of "destruction" (rather than "de-construction") of musical forms.

Setting the pace on "Lick My Boots" is an undulating guitar loop. The usual sludge of unpleasant sounds follows Herrema through her tortuous exercises in non-singing. On "Glitterbust", a violent industrial ceremony, the electrostatic blasts of guitar resonate with the disjointed, asynchronous interplay of the voices. Another towering example of their Dadaist art is the cacophonous dance number "Funky Son", complete with filtered trombone and demonic sonic storms. The atonal delirium of "Ratcreeps" is followed by "New York Avenue Bridge", a piano romance played with a disturbingly breezy attitude.

The Cubist deconstruction of blues-rock is complete. So too is the refounding of the aesthetic relationship between artist (author of an operation that is anything but "communicative") and audience (forced to reckon with a work that is destabilizing to the utmost degree, since, while denying all the fundamental traits of the genre it revisits, it develops its most degenerate and gruesome aspects, giving rise to a terrifying sonic short-circuit). What matters now is no longer the track in its final version, but the process by which that track is destroyed, recomposed, assembled according to aleatory techniques, left to its fate as a "mutant form". The "finished form" is just a memory, a "classical" legacy. Certainly not the stuff for hardened bastards like Royal Trux, who have always been used to reckoning with the most blinding flashes of chaos.

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08/11/2006