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Album Review
by SashaS
12-1-2004
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| Lesser: more heavy as well as cosmic |
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Lesser: 'Suppressive Acts I - X'
(Matador)
Slipped disc #13: Lesser
Ministry, Nine Inch Nails, Fear Factory, Young Gods, perhaps Eisturzende Neubauten, have tried to marry heaviness and electronica and have mainly come up with Industrock. Well, just listen to ‘Young, Dumb, Full Of Come and Destroying My Will To Live’ on ‘Suppressive Acts I-X’ to hear what would happen if Kraftwerk, Slayer and Prince were jamming out the same groove.
Other tracks are even nobler attempt by Lesser and the quartet that follow are as heavy, experimental, noisy, underground, dark, disturbing, bloody marvellous! With added elements of jazz, psychedelia, samples, R&B feel, rap-hood, this is truly modern Urban music, perhaps even - World Music and not that narrow genre we get from the Third world countries, that is no more than the indigenous folk music.
‘Acts’ are full of sonic alertness, loud warnings, mind-expansion, descent into darkness of souls, freak-out, brilliantly disturbing. Even the titles cause a bit of panic - ‘Crashing Your Repulsive Prince-Nez Underfoot’, ‘Indicators And Indices of Subjugation’, ‘Who It Is… 6 Months In The Icebox’… These ‘I - X’ is a pedantic paranoia.
Lesser is the brainchild of J. Doerck, who began his musical career in San Diego as a member of various punk rock outfits including A Minor Forest. Doerck adopted the name Lesser to express a new punk aesthetic through electronic music. He moved to San Francisco where he hooked up with leading lights in the electronic music scene such as Kid 606, bLevin bLectum and Matmos. Lesser’s collab with the latter lead him to work with Bjork on her ‘Vespertine’ tour a couple a years ago.
‘Suppressive Acts I-X’ is a collection of ten songs with an agenda to bind a history of metal to a career in electronica, with some interesting results. Metal song aside, the album is a study case in economics: reusing a base of 50 or so samples and manipulating them enough to render them useful across an entire disc.
In keeping with its namesake [see footnote for explanation - footnote Ed.], this record was meant to be a chip on the shoulder, a polarizing album but it is not as alienating as his previous efforts, such as ‘Gearhound’ (2000): it may be more reflective, more listener friendly but it will not give you an easy ride.
The press release helpfully informs us that “‘Suppressive Acts I - X’ also includes an album by Lesser’s pre-electro-clash fake 80s band The Robotic (think Men Without Hats) recorded in 1995, in MP3 format as well as some videos or something.”
Lesser offers an inspired misuse of machinery with imagination of a sound pervert. More, we want more!
9/10
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* Suppressive Acts: Actions of omissions undertaken knowingly to suppress, reduce or impede Scientology or Scientologists (Such actions are high crimes and result in dismissal from Scientology and its organizations.)
SashaS
12-1-2004
Lesser’s album ‘Suppressive Acts ‘I - X’ is available now on Matador
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