Memory #1: I’m SHAGGING MAJOR ASS down the highway. I’m heading to Seattle on highway 26. It’s the road everyone takes to get from campus (WSU) to Mommy and Daddy’s house, ‘cept my mommy and daddy haven’t made my bed in 10 years -- I’m going to Seattle to see The Locust.
I like The Locust. Scratch that, I fucking LOVE The Locust. I’m listening to Poison The Well in my car stereo to get myself pumped up. Yeah, I know, someday I might think better of it. Anyway, I’m walking into the club. I tell them who I am -- and that I’m on the list, which I actually quite-officially am -- because I’m very prestigious, part of the much-mythologized Music Press. I’m kinda bad ass, in my Portishead hoodie I wear every day.
They tell me to suck their balls; if I don’t pay $10, I will not be seeing the bands tonight. Their balls are immense, but I cradle them in both hands and slowly slide them into my agape mouth, paying the $10 even though I’ve already paid at least $30 in gas and expenses just to shower a band with appreciative words. (This kind of thing, by the way, still happens to me every time I go to cover a show. LET ME IN YOU FUCKFACE, I’M WORKIN’ HERE.)
I get to the venue and get to the point: The opening band is some sick tribute to the bald dude from Hellraiser, but the second band is Hella. I’ve never heard of them, but they’re my new favorite band. Kids are leaning over to see if ol’ Zach mutha-fucking Hill has a double-kick pedal, and I laugh because as a drummer I know he’s using but one kick pedal and a savvy knowledge of how to manipulate low toms to make his thunderous, filled-in din.
Which makes it that much more impressive. A drummer once told me, “You don’t need that double-dip/kick/whatever shit man, just really rock the single-kick.” And he was absolutely right -- Zach Hill is proof. Hell, he’s the pudding. And on this night, he’s making believers out of a few. Others are scoffing as guitarist Spencer Seim makes awkward smalltalk, implying Hella aren’t a “real band.”
Hey, some people just don’t get it; doesn’t that make It even better? Yes, it does. I can’t stop banging my head as Hella dip deeper and deeper underwater, their gluttonous use of arpeggios and bass-tom-tom-bass patterns forming an immense web of energy. How could one not be sucked in by that?
Hill is the star, of course. He creates the limber rhythms few thought to create in this context, a full-out assault quick to divide the crowd. I can’t think of a single reason why Hill won’t become an indie superstar, Hella an underground sensation. (Oh, and The Locust played.)
I begin reviewing Hella albums at a furious rate, requesting them above all else for both magazines and the college radio station I work for. I interview Hill. He’s coolio. I buy Hill’s solo book-slash-CD and probably a dozen other albums in two years’ time. Hill knows people like me are listening, so he keeps coming with the antonym to anthems, the prog-wastoid-spaced-out-stoner-spiked-with-neon-pink-syrup-split-hits. The straight triple-dipped yogurt, yo.
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Memory #2: I’m walking around at Bumbershoot in 200-something. I just saw These Arms Are Snakes, and I’m heading to see Galactic or something like that; prog-funk band. I see old buddy Matt. We go wayyy back. I started my first band with dude back in sixth grade. We were Demolish. He’s a bad-ass drummer in a band called Bullet Club. I’m not sure I like the name, but he’s gotten next-level on the skins and they sound great.
He tells me about his latest favorite band: At The Drive-In. “It’s bad ass dude,” he tells me and I swear we’re back in sixth and seventh grade, talking about Mötley Crüe again; same enthusiasm, same vibe. Matt rules. As he talks about ATDI and Fugazi, I’m happy, because none of us liked that indie stuff much back in the day because we weren’t exposed to it. Obviously things have changed, for the better.
I also secretly know something Matt doesn’t: That At The Drive-In has just splintered into two bands: Sparta and The Mars Volta. I don’t tell Matt because I hate delivering this kind of news; it makes me feel like they might think I’m enjoying it, like maybe I’d been waiting to drop it on them all day like a cartoon anvil. But I know that a seismic split has occurred, and it’s already obvious which side will hold my attention.
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Memory #3: I’m at SXSW watching Hella, and I’m not that impressed because there are four people making so much noise I can’t hear the drummer. I just ran past David frickin’ Fricke on the street and didn’t even stop to suck his cock because I was in such a hurry to see Hella. I just yelled “David Fricke!” watched him turn around, and kept running.
He probably gets that all the time. Anyway, this new incarnation of Hella is busy beyond belief. It hurts my ears to listen to them, yet there is potential here. If Hella’s original duo ever found the right counterparts to glom onto, look the Eff out.
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Memory #4: I’m sitting in the sand in Idaho. We’re camping at a spot where the river somehow has miles of actual sand banks, just like at the beach, but maybe even finer. Luxuriant. My girlfriend and I are going to break up right after this trip. I’m listening to The Mars Volta’s Tremulant EP, and I realize that Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and Cedric Bixler-Zavala (with their fancy hyphenated names) are planning not only a new direction, but a revolution.
It happens during “Concertina”; its complete mastery of all the tools At The Drive-In used to reach its apex -- plus extras -- is scary, and its midsection is stuff of legend, arpeggios stretched on a rack; ride cymbal-snare-bass-tom-snare; strange electric flourishes. Eclipsing ATDI is a formality. O R-L and C B-Z reign supreme.
Extraordinarily enough, The Mars Volta will never make a track as “conventional” as “Concertina” again. (Holy Fuck!) And as they climb the prog ladder, Rodriguez-Lopez starts flooding the market with solo joints. And they’re good; a lot of them riff on Gong, especially the numbers with sax accompaniment. Others sound like Tim Hecker, Rameses III, Gong’s Steve Hillage solo (Rainbow Dome Musik, baby) and your favorite field-recording artist mixed. That’s good. Can’s Damo Suzuki shows up. That’s good. Then Lydia Lunch, the late Michael Ward and now...
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Present-tense narrative-style sequence #1: Cryptomnesia is a collaboration between two musicians who -- I would argue -- have had as much influence on their respective niches (Zach Hill in the deep underground, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez in the mid-level, not-quite-huge-but-on-a-major-label-and-12-year-old-kids-adore-you-in-every-town, not-commercial-but-sorta-commercial way. Get it?) as anyone over the last 10 years. You may hate them, you may love them, but you can’t deny their drive to fill the world with their unique slant on music.
Do I even need to finish this review? Cryptomnesia is RIDICULOUSLY RIPE in a way that leaves one squandering words. For once, I cringe when I read the jocular song titles (“Paper Cunts” just doesn’t do this material service). These tunes are so intense your attention starts strong and withers under the weight of the onslaught. It’s so hard to focus on anything else in the room it almost becomes easy to focus on anything else in the room. A table, a lamp -- your psyche will play tricks on you. Anything to divert what your brain will see as intimidating stimuli. Trust me, it’s inevitable.
But, as always, your hard work will not go unrewarded. Albums this dense don’t wear out easily. You won’t be humming any of its blowtorch harmonies on the way to work, and you won’t learn many of its passages on your beginner’s amp unless you’re a bad-ass. And if you haven’t kept up with the principles involved up to this point you might just get your face ripped off.
The majority will always have their well-prepared jokes. “That shit sounds like a drum kit being thrown down the stairs, fucker,” they’ll say. But, truth is, it takes more guts to throw a drum kit down the stairs than it does to tune one up, buy brand-new heads every week, take lessons and get real good, grow long hair, then proceed to play in the douche-iest cover band in Coeur D’Alene, Idaho.
With help from Jonathan Hischke (a member of the four-piece Hella I wasn't digging too much above), Juan Alderete de la Peña (The Mars Volta), and the always-handy Cedric Bixler Zavala, El Grupo Nuevo have formed a union as explosive as anything the principals have ever been involved with (save the first few Hella albums, which just can’t/won’t be beat. Seriously people, pay your respects).
As this is the first in a trio of records, I can’t imagine either of the next two doing anything to surpass the general noisiness of this excursion. It’s not that I don’t think the musicians will try to expand, it’s just that I don’t know what they could possibly do to clutter things up to a higher degree. Run a belt sander over it? Slip it through a meat grinder? Record funny voices and skits overtop?
Cryptomnesia is at once loud, complex, abrasive, strangely melodic, destructive, and mathematical. It is a swarm of sound, with songs that snip all inhibitions and snuff every nerve receptor. Each offering here is meter-perfect and crafted instinctively to flat-out destroy the boundaries of rock music.
Hill in particular seems energized and focused, perhaps working with a composer who can finally render him part of a complex puzzle rather than an all-encompassing entity. With his work here and another two-man Hella rager on the way, 2009 is shaping up to be his strongest yet. Not to mention Rodriguez-Lopez, who is on an even zanier hot streak with Old Money still fresh in the wallets of critics, new solo shit out, and an upcoming Mars Volta record pending.
I can’t wait to discuss Cryptomnesia with 1/20 of the population, if that. I can’t wait for its next installment. I can’t wait to listen to it until I can actually differentiate the immense twists, bends, and creases of each song. I’m guessing it’ll be around July, maybe August. Then again I might put extra time in, if this article’s length is any indication.
And by then, Zach Hill and Omar Rodriguez-Lopez will have released a baker’s dozen new albums each.
1. Tuberculoids
2. Half Kleptos
3. Cryptomnesia
4. They're Coming to Get You, Barbara
5. Puny Humans
6. Shake Is for 8th Graders
7. Noir
8. Paper Cunts
9. Elderly Pair Beaten With Hammer
10. Warren Oates
11. Fuck Your Mouth
More about: El Grupo Nuevo
