Her Space Holiday
The Young Machines
[Mush; 2003]
The extended monologue of addiction and plummet contained on this CD is so wall-to-wall tragic that I reckoned it could only be assessed via method acting. But after countless listens, I realized that drinking four Clearchannels (one-third organic apple juice, one-third expensive gin, one-third cheap saki-- the kind with an "intended for cooking" sticker) wasn't enough. To truly pull a Clinton on this album's pain, I would have had to freebase suppositories, disown my circle, and score some fabric softener so the noose wouldn't burn as much.
The good folks at Texas Instruments helped to determine the rating above, based on an average calculation of the 9.9 this release deserved for its conception and off-putting bravery, and the 3.9 it earns due to par loops and too-precious delivery. The Young Machines will rank among your favorite albums if you're someone's mortifyingly jaded ex, but if you come to it craving electronic vocal-pop keeping pace with anything north of Jimmy Tamborello's shoulders, you'll end up frustrated by the simple and repetitive violin bits that drive the big retro beats of "Tech Romance", "Girl Problem" and "My Girlfriend's Boyfriend". These stately, neutered forays into gangsta's paradise don't do enough with their chamber-hop, though "Boyfriend"'s choral punk-out at least adds variety. Lest you think any kind of rap reference is a sad stretch when discussing Her Space Holiday: the album was not just released on the primarily underground hip-hop label Mush, but its liner notes' brief shoutouts additionally thank Aesop Rock, Atmosphere, The Streets, cLOUDDEAD, and The Neptunes. This ain't your father's digital shoegaze.
Mark Bianchi's life was in the shitter, if his lyrics can be trusted, yet his blippy backing tracks, despite their limitations (his own songs sound like his remixes of others' songs, etc) remain oddly ascendant in tone-- some of these could serve as Muzak for a tourist-town's rainforest or seahorse exhibit. The title track (and what a title, awesome in its own right, and suggesting such triumphs as the Young Fresh Fellows, Marble Giants, Gods, People, legend Neil, TV on the Radio's Liars, The Constantines' "Lions", and Pavement's Gary) is a stunner, a kind of IDM take on The Ice Storm's score, with anime musicboxery, and are those voices saying "let go" and "save me?" Avant-guardians will ruin my fun by crying Moby, but dig the layered reprise on "The Luxury of Loneliness".
"Meet the Pressure" is a bitchslap to Bianchi's negative reviews and reviewers. I sympathize with the man's point: the de-evolution of labor involved in blurbiage and its reception is disheartening.
1. An artist labors to fashion an album.
2. A critic half-labors to fashion a review about how the album wasn't messianic.
3. A webboarder calls the critic a bald ugly fag.
4. A lurker misregurges the webboarder in an IM to his cousin: "Don't download that band; their junk'll be stoops."
Bianchi's song is about meanness, revenge and lyric-misquoting. He includes a sample from an answering machine about his "Internet press" after he says some crits are "hoping that their viciousness will boost traffic on their site." But then he ruins his complicated rumination on the indie "media" with a fantasy (?) about the critic being cuckolded. I had to think of some of the disses my inbox has weathered (from artists I like, such as Ween and Cex) and the sensitivity expressed by other artists (Aereogramme and Songs: Ohia, who asked for my address-- I cling every night to my crossbow, Molina, with a Cape Fear tripwire around my lhasa apso).
So if you're up to hearing what Kurtis Blow would sound like on Saddle Creek, or if you love cinematic self-vigilantism, or cover artwork that places engine gears in women's wombs, or if you've been waiting for a breakdown album since Kramer's The Guilt Trip, or if you can dig how "Japanese Gum" conjures a mood by suggesting Black Black brand (Engrish fans know their slogan "Hi-Technical Taste and Flavor!"), buy The Young Machines. Few albums about druggies dealing with the death of a grandmother are as stark. Bianchi even admits to missing his mom at one intermittently moving point. But when his liner notes claim he doesn't deserve any of his fans, he's being way too hard on himself. Hopefully his devotees know their suicide watch etiquette.
Posted to Pitchfork by William Bowers on January 16, 2004.
