Steve Dalachinsky and The Snobs
"Massive Liquidity"- An unsurreal post-apocalyptic anti-opera in two acts -
(Bambalam.Records/September 2011)
After one of the best Acid Mothers Temple’s records called "Cometary Orbital Drive", french label Bam Balam.Records comes back this year with a new collaboration between new-york beat poet Steve Dalachinsky and french art-rockers The Snobs. Dalachinsky plays with words like models William Burroughs or Allen Ginsberg did few decades ago: using cut-up and automatic writing, he creates new meanings. Not only a writer, Dalachinsky performs regurarly with free-jazz musicians and friends to give his text a new life. You can see the poet at work, how he breaks the rules of the language to create his own and how he embodies his words to converse with the sound of a saxophone or a double bass.
"Massive Liquidity" is the result of a Bam Balam.Records’ wish to hear the deep and mysterious Dalachinsky’s voice mixed with a more rock and electric oriented music. The Snobs are a french duet formed by brothers Mad Rabbit and Duck Feeling in 2003. They produce records on their own and release them on their website for free. The latest, called Rhythms Of Concrete, was published last march. It puts together David Bowie/Brian Eno trilogy’s soundscapes, Miles Davis’ mechanical grooves from 1972’s masterpiece On The Corner, with a bit of Can’s Holger Czuckay collage science.
Dalachinsky and The Snobs met in winter 2011 in Paris to record some vocals for the project. With the first coming back to New York few days later, french duet had the freedom to process with sounds just like Dalachinsky did with words: they used edits, collages and experiment to create the most cohesive work. Duck Feeling plays all the instruments on the record: guitar, bass, sitar, electronic organ, psychedelic effects, percussion instruments made with petrol cans or metal sheets. There’s also trumpet and xaphoon - which provides a lovely oriental tone to the first musical suite - contributions by friend of the band’s Devil Sister. Mad Rabbit produces by using the studio tools like compositional instruments. He sorts the best parts of the music and the words out to form something cohesive and moving.
"Massive Liquidity" presents two twenty minutes musical suites made of various influences: 1969’s Miles Davis’ instrumental freedom hit Einstürzende Neubauten’s industrial and elegant sense of rhythm. Psychedelic effects are both essential and measured to let a strict groove between James Brown and Arnold Schoenberg happen. Dalachinsky’s voice is the narrative element: it can be a gentle whisper at a moment and turn into a wild and menacing raucous noise just few seconds later. Words and music interact, they sometimes hurt each other or simply become one only powerful and moving sound. The record’s closing belongs to the voice, which seems to clarify the violent and cosmic experience the listener just had: "It’s his head now… Pull the trigger".
