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I’m uncomfortable making an out-and-out judgement call on this album because predominantly it’s art, not music. Or so I assume, and I have that world weary feeling that just pulling it apart will merely invite an inevitable reaction. So, instead, I’ll say this. There are elements to this album I like. The use of didgeridoo and tribal vocals really made my hair stand on end at time, and the sax throughout was uplifting. With such diverse sounds laid one on top of the other, the music was never boring and frequently I found a smile on my face as an arabesque peel rang out.
However there’s other parts of this album where heavily accented semi-demi rapping made my skin crawl. There’s nothing about a nasal Aussie brogue that should be encouraged on an album and I would go so far as to say that, on tracks like Fire and Lightning & Thunder the good backing tracks are entirely undone by the grating voice. And it’s not like they don’t have nice voices. The vocals on Cent’nal in Babylon are toned down and smooth, a pleasant experience all in. But who am I to say. Maybe this is all a juxtaposition of contemporary suburban Australiana with traditional, pre-invasion harmonic that seeks to illustrate… something.
Maybe I’m a traditionalist but I think when they’re doing this sort of global sounding jazz vibe funk thing Assemblage Point are pretty good. When they get too experimental they seem to lose the thread of things actually sounding good and end up sounding amateurish and blighted and a little bit Blake’s Seven.
And then, for a low like PVG which is almost indescribably unlistenable, there’s Go Right Down. A seething, industrial, gritty, hypnotic track that uses many of the earlier bad points and brings them together in to something interesting and sustained. Interesting.
