Shellac

Rock as mathematics, its components as physical variables: bass is mass, guitar is velocity, drums are time. Bob Weston, Steve Albini, Todd Trainer: in other words, Shellac. After tearing through American underground rock with two of the most vicious noise-hardcore bands of the Eighties, Big Black and Rapeman, in 1989 Steve Albini, disillusioned with the deceptive workings of the music industry (even the indie circuit has its share of rip-offs), decided to take a break from rock, at least as a musician, since his brilliant parallel career as a sound engineer was moving forward faster than ever, thanks to collaborations with Jesus Lizard, Slint, Jon Spencer, Fugazi, to name just the first ones that come to mind.

Albini returned in 1992, once again determined to tear rock to shreds, joined by the equally "malicious" intentions of Weston and Trainer, forming Shellac (Of North America), who within two years would sign the definitive epitaph on the grave of American rock. From the ashes of hardcore had risen post-core, post rock, slo-core, math rock; Shellac took them all in, lumped them together, and threw them into a meat grinder: that meat grinder is "At Action Park".

Every massacre, though, needs to be carefully planned to succeed, and Shellac designed and executed theirs with scientific skill and precision. Albini, who has no love for terms invented by critics, calls it minimalist rock, but there's no denying that the ten tracks on "At Action Park" display the typical hallmarks of math-rock (asymmetrical time signatures, sudden shifts in rhythm, the angular, geometric tone of the string instruments, the unbearable noise-inflected intensity of the guitars). At the same time, though, the album's sound steers clear of the progressive tendencies of math-rock bands like Don Caballero and Blind Idiot God, whose music seems to unfurl toward infinity rather than coil in on itself into nothingness, as Shellac's does.

The music on "At Action Park" is a symptom, not a symbol, of the contemporary human condition: a deafening muteness, an incurable solipsism, a hysteria with no outlet. The record's thirty-seven minutes sound like they were played by musicians with their backs against the wall, desperate to escape an oppressive situation but unable to do so. Claustrophobic yet urgent and direct: that's how "At Action Park" sounds, thanks in no small part to Albini's trademark recording technique — the ultimate anti-Eno — which captures the band's performance "live" in the studio, forgoing standard multitrack recording, so as to render the spontaneity of the sound through the headphones.

Wetson hammers out heavy chords, drawing out their length whenever necessary, and clears the ground for the timbral digressions, wrapped in highly complex rhythmic figures, of Trainer's drumming.

For Shellac, art is as exact as mathematics, and it's the sum of the individual parts that makes the whole. A whole that, inevitably, can't do without Albini's guitar and the harmonic torments it inflicts ("My Black Ass", "Pull The Cup"). Every song seems to contribute to the denuclearization, through a rationalizing compositional process, of the musical styles that have dominated the American independent scene since post-punk. So we get, one after another, a grim, belligerent march à la Jesus Lizard ("Crow"), an impotent brand of hardcore in the vein of Fugazi ("Song Of The Minerals"), a paranoid chant like Pere Ubu minus the Dadaism and plus a lot more rage ("A Minute"), a punk'n'roll for rusted scrap metal ("Dog & The Pony Show") — all of which bring order to the chaos of an earlier era: anarchy becomes controlled, and that makes it all the more chilling.

"The Idea Of North" wanders through deeply Slint-like territory, guitar chords reduced to tinkling bells and the vocals to a whisper. Then the explosion. And finally, the void. The album closes with the decomposing metallic carcass of "Il Porno Star": Albini relentlessly repeats strangled chords that give Trainer the pretext to find the logarithm, base "rhythm", of the Apocalypse.

The Action Park referenced in the title was a famous water park in New Jersey, later shut down in 1996. Here, though, there's no room for messing around: rock isn't stereotypical youthful diversion; rock is often drama. Enjoy.

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21/12/2008