Why you’d do this to your cat is beyond me, but I don’t have a cat, so I don’t have to make that call. Tim Thornton does, and what he does with/to his cat is none of my business; if he wants to shave most of it except for the parts that actually make it look like a lion, that’s on him.
But maybe Lion Cuts (Doom Trip), Thornton’s new endeavor as CDX, is the perfect descriptor for cutting away the excess, as it were, and going lean and mean, with a few aesthetic touches here and there for intense flavor and style. Still, Thornton’s approach to drippy disco-synthesizer grinders is workmanlike, getting right down to business without any nonsense, no fuss, no muss. The jams jam in earnest immediately, not not jamming until nearly everyone in a hundred-yard radius is exhausted from jamming these jams so incessantly.
Is it a surprise that these CDX jams were recorded live with no overdubs?
It should be.
These blasts from the Blue Lodge trip smoothly through apparatuses aimed at suspecting and unsuspecting everypeople alike, pulsing unimpeded in false color arteries like mass transit at rush hour in the frictionless future. In this future, everything serves a purpose, nothing is wasted, not a single molecule, not a single note. Thornton’s got the efficiency thing down here, a well-oiled — well, not “oiled,” that would be wasteful. Maybe a well-waxed or whatever it is in the future they have that makes things run smoother. Probably a polymer. Maybe it’s just pure energy. Whatever science has come up with, it certainly hasn’t predicted this well-maned, oddly groomed stylistic anomaly. It’s the only evidence left of excess.
It’s fine, though. No, really, it’s cool.
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