Thursday, March 13, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Listening Station

DJ Icey

Different Day

Ever wonder who dubbed Michael Jackson the "King of Pop"? Though it was likely his own creation, someone publicly decided this was the nickname Jacko deserved--except that, to nearly everyone else, he didn't. Hyperbolic monikers are typically the product of artists (and publicists) caught up in their own megalomania. In dance music, you see this as well. L.A.'s Christopher Lawrence has been referred to as the "Trance Messiah," despite lacking the devout following of some Euro jocks. And then there's Orlando's producer/DJ Icey, touted by some as "King of Breaks."

It's hard to ascertain whether Icey ought to be bestowed such an honor. While his production output could be one of the most prolific in the American underground, and his tour schedule is busier than most, at more than 125 performances a year, Icey lacks the aesthetic character to really stand out from his peers. Then again, breakbeat music has almost always lacked the personality found in house, trance and jungle, whether you're speaking about the artist or his music.

Icey's second artist album, Different Day, livens the breakbeat genre up the way Time Maas' artist debut last year, Loud, pushed the margins of progressive house. It explores many different types of computerized tones, rhythms and atmospheres, without short-circuiting from disunity. It thwarts the genre's usual monotony, from the horn-friendly funk of "A Little Louder" to the soft/loud synth dynamo in "Dim the Sky" and the nostalgia of "Electro Morning MMIII." No-name vocalists humbly check themselves against Icey's digitized subtlety, which both counters the abrupt bombast that hinders so much breakbeat (especially American breaks), and keeps things diva-free.

The album is not without its duller moments, and a few derivative elements recall recent work by Euro duo Hybrid and on John Digweed's Bedrock label. But there are only a handful of qualms here. Icey has crafted a work that's all at once invigorating, beautiful, focused and ultramodern. If he's not "King of Breaks," he's displaying a hierarchic ascent.--Mike Prevatt

Living Things

Turn in Your Friends & Neighbors EP

If I slap a "produced by Steve Albini" sticker on my forehead, will I be fawned over as the next indie sensation, dripping with credibility and utter cool? Producer Albini's (of Big Black, Rapeman and Shellac fame) name must confer such rock 'n' roll magic, as the moniker figures heavily in the bio and liner notes of Living Things' Dreamworks EP (as well as an upcoming album by F Minus; if we can hypothesize that the size of the sticker is proportional to the band's desperation-for-attention level, F Minus is in baaad shape--the sticker's frickin' huge). As for Living Things, well, the band runs a risk of being eclipsed by the man/myth/legend--that is to say, this EP, while a solid enough effort, is just unremarkable enough to make Albini's production credit stand out like a throbbing ego.

Which isn't to say that Living Things aren't good. They are. But first, let's get the gimmickry out of the way: Living Things is three too-cool-for-school brothers of variously fashionable hairstyles who go for straightahead, chunk-a-lunk old-style rock. Turn In Your Friends & Neighbors is short on innovation, but long on having a big ol' rock 'n' roll boot in your face. The EP kicks off with a grooving, sinister track "Bombs Below," which has leadman/oldest brother Lillian Berlin quickly establishing a signature style of singing that is part-stoner drone, part hairball growl. Meanwhile, "Standard Oil Trust" features a stomper of a chorus that's hard to resist singing along to. And yet it's not hard to imagine Living Things taking their place in the cabinet alongside the hundreds of other plural-noun bands in the bulging Rock Resurgence File. Alive, after all, doesn't necessarily mean kicking.--Andrew Kiraly

The Telescopes

Third Wave

The Telescopes is definitely the right name for them. Third Wave is an album full of songs about our relationships to outer space, of unbridgeable gaps and of distances collapsed. The play between extraterrestrial coldness and intimacy allows you to imagine all sorts of heart-pounding adventures on glorious, colorful planets, but never lets you forget the cold press of the telescope's steel against your eye.

The album begins with "A Cabin in the Sky", a perfect model for the energies of coziness and loneliness that define the band's sound. There are warm harmonies; there are cold, disjointed piano chords. There is the drowsy richness of an autoharp, and the icy swirl of theremin. The space theme continues on tracks like "Tesla Death Ray," which actually uses sounds from Space Invaders itself, as well as from electric drills (to amazingly musical effect), a toy car and some serious vocoders. As gimmicky as this sounds in the abstract, The Telescopes pull it all into a solidly atmospheric number. Other spacey, alien-ated tunes on Third Wave include "Moog Destroya" and "My Name Is Zardak (Drop Your Weaponz)."

Curiously, though, the best tracks are the more terrestrial ones. Standout "When Nemo Sank the Nautilus" might take its name from ur-sci-fi guy Jules Verne, but the song proves there's nowhere more earthy than 20,000 leagues under the sea. The machines set a steady, rolling beat past which flow liquid piano and floating cello and clarinet lines. Not to mention the album's loveliest melody. "Winter #2" is also strong, a stark piece of drifting, displaced melancholy. And "A Good Place to Hide" is memorably strange, wedding a noir jazz vamp to an Elvis sound-alike mumbling things like, "You don't have to be rich to be lonely."

While these songs might be all over the map, the album is united by its themes of proximity and distance, and by the fact that The Telescopes are talented enough to be consistently interesting.--Dan Ionascu