Monday, June 07, 2010
Divine Tragedy marks yet another landmark
Some things should be left alone. For example, I admire the Coen brothers a great deal but I cannot bring myself to watch their remake of The Ladykillers. In the visual arts redoing is outright fakery. No-one can now paint Guernica. Music is different. It's meant to be performed. My esteemed colleague, Hardwick Herpes, has pointed out that our society has an unhealthy obsession with technical standards of performance. The Anachronisms, as metamusicians par excellence, have made a career of paying no attention norms and standards so it is not surprising that their latest release revisits that staggering work of meta-art, Themes from the History of Time. The lads have redone several individual pieces before but this is different. Clearly the Anachros have no fear about metaphorically changing the smile on the Mona Lisa but to us fans the news that this is what they were up to caused great trepidation. Themes has always been on pedestal: a majestic solo project by Sid that, astonishingly, achieved a merger with is own subject - i.e. became itself part of the unfolding legacy of homo sapiens.
We needn't have worried. Again quoting Hardwick, a consistent feature of the Anachros' oeuvre is that the album is the "unit of analysis". As the mainstream musical world continues to move towards free-for-all of individual videos and downloaded singles the Anachros have drawn line in the sand. Themes is a collective piece and they've preserved that but, in typical fashion, embellished it. The central song in transforming themes from a masterpiece by Sid Herpes to Divine Tragedy, a new Anachro masterpiece, is the track Extinction. Interposing this song with the original Herpes compositions lifts the whole album into a different dimension; it locates human follies within the ultimate "narrative" - that of evolution. Coupled with the hypnotic melody, this track sets up a transcendence of the original subject-matter (as if that were possible) that is built upon by the other additions - a reprise of Cosmic Space Fart, which is so appropriate, Names for Evolution and Politically Correct Renaissance Man.
Maybe the Anachros could even pull off a musical version of The Ladykillers.
Some things should be left alone. For example, I admire the Coen brothers a great deal but I cannot bring myself to watch their remake of The Ladykillers. In the visual arts redoing is outright fakery. No-one can now paint Guernica. Music is different. It's meant to be performed. My esteemed colleague, Hardwick Herpes, has pointed out that our society has an unhealthy obsession with technical standards of performance. The Anachronisms, as metamusicians par excellence, have made a career of paying no attention norms and standards so it is not surprising that their latest release revisits that staggering work of meta-art, Themes from the History of Time. The lads have redone several individual pieces before but this is different. Clearly the Anachros have no fear about metaphorically changing the smile on the Mona Lisa but to us fans the news that this is what they were up to caused great trepidation. Themes has always been on pedestal: a majestic solo project by Sid that, astonishingly, achieved a merger with is own subject - i.e. became itself part of the unfolding legacy of homo sapiens.
We needn't have worried. Again quoting Hardwick, a consistent feature of the Anachros' oeuvre is that the album is the "unit of analysis". As the mainstream musical world continues to move towards free-for-all of individual videos and downloaded singles the Anachros have drawn line in the sand. Themes is a collective piece and they've preserved that but, in typical fashion, embellished it. The central song in transforming themes from a masterpiece by Sid Herpes to Divine Tragedy, a new Anachro masterpiece, is the track Extinction. Interposing this song with the original Herpes compositions lifts the whole album into a different dimension; it locates human follies within the ultimate "narrative" - that of evolution. Coupled with the hypnotic melody, this track sets up a transcendence of the original subject-matter (as if that were possible) that is built upon by the other additions - a reprise of Cosmic Space Fart, which is so appropriate, Names for Evolution and Politically Correct Renaissance Man.
Maybe the Anachros could even pull off a musical version of The Ladykillers.
