Music. There’s a lot of it about isn’t there? On the telly, on the radio, on the internet, in our heads, memories and hearts. Some of it is big and ugly and some of it’s small and beautifully formed; some of it loud and pompous, some of it quiet and reserved. Some of it prevails but, sadly, most of it is forgotten. So come on, let’s all sit down, stop watching that pointless rubbish over there and hear it for the treasurable pleasurables – a regular Beat-tastic browse through the heavy-rimmed halls of past classics and forgotten finds.
This issue – Hell With The Lid Off by Texas born god-bothered rubber-room-headin’ MC 900ft Jesus and Ageatis Byrjun by super cool Icelandic misfits Sigur Rós…..
I first heard MC 900 ft Jesus’ ‘Hell With The Lid Off in Summer 1993 the morning after a party in North London where a sleepless DJ was whipping up his ‘Talking to the Spirits’ and Pink Floyd’s ‘Breathe’ into a mucky hypnotic groove while the detritus of the party went about its’ semi-conscious business. I’d previously heard ‘Truth is Out of Style’, the first single from the album, in 1989, and was struck by it’s brilliant originality – a petulant rap about rocketships, Shirley Maclaine and bigfoot stealing his car, MC 900ft Jesus sounded like a speed-addled subversive redneck who had just happened to win some free studio time by accidentally outwitting some stoned hicks in the local bar.
I foolishly never followed through by buying the album that followed, ‘Hell With The Lid Off’, anticipating that (the wonderful De La Soul aside) it would be the same formulaic and slightly tedious swaggering hip-hop of the previous few years. Discovering it years later made me regret the time I had wasted without it in my record box.
What made ‘Hell With The Lid Off’ so unique was it’s weirdly antithetical warm embrace of funk and the electronic, house and hip-hop sounds of the time and it’s stark splicing of these to the cynical and disturbed rantings of a seriously unhinged individual whose sole purpose seemed to be to carry out the dark desires of the voices in his head. His frenzied mantra of “Everybody shut up and leave me alone” on “I’m Going Straight to Heaven” is a bizarre call to arms and follow his example finding salvation in suicide. It’s brilliantly ironic that the track wouldn’t sound out of place in a dark basement full of delirious hallucinating clubbers swaying and bobbing together as if members of an E’d-up nihilistic cult.
As if to confirm it’s obsession with the righteous and the wrong, the album is peppered with glimpses into weird and disturbing periphery worlds; the final track, ‘Born With Monkey Asses’ stitches a sample of a paranoid schizophrenic rant to a mesmerizing analogue hip hop beat and on the deeply uncomfortable and deeply funky ‘Too Bad’ we ride shotgun with a certifiable maniac who comes into your house when you’re asleep, holds a nine inch blade to your throat and gleefully wakes you up with the deranged “Hi! I’m MC Nine Oh Oh! How ya doin’? – too bad you’re gonna die”. Blimey! It’s enough to induce a panic attack.
1990 was a time when most of the artists being reviewed in Mixmag were celebrating freedom and joy at the tail end of the first wave of the new ecstasy culture so its’ sense of foreboding and evil was an unsettling reminder that what goes up quite often comes down. That may sound a little antipathetic but its’ unbound pessimism and relentless waves of menace and desperation were highly original and, ironically, hugely entertaining. The follow up albums, “Welcome To My Dream” and “One Step Ahead Of The Spider” moved increasingly from trippy house-hop into a live, jazz-infused sound and are equally remarkable in their own rights. But it was this collaboration with DJ Zero that really made me feel that I was listening to something genuinely ground breaking, exhilarating and supremely demented; it’s an album that will indulge the voices in your head – and while they’re distracted you can funk it up, singing into a freshly sharpened utensil and gurn into shards of broken mirror.
By contrast, listening to Sigur Rós can be a passive affair. Like some kind of contemporary classical music, their Icelandic blast whirls us through emotional highs and lows which can make you feel breathless and numb. And, although Sigur Rós’ heavenly stars have been in the ascendant over the last few years (mostly thanks to the BBC’s use of their ‘Hoppípolla’ on their ‘Planet Earth’ trailer), probably their best and most accessible work to date is Agaetis Byrjun, released in 1999.
From the main opening track ‘Svefi g-englar’, which starts delicately and otherworldly and ends with the sound of a beating heart you know you are on unfamiliar and melodramatic ground. And the album sustains it’s elegant, soaring momentum right through to the appropriately titled and wistful end track, ‘Avalon’. These are a pertinent frame for everything which unfolds in between – each track at times stunning and independent in their own right but also forming part of a much larger and much more beautiful whole.
The album’s peak comes seven and a half minutes into ‘Viorar Vel Til Loftarasa’ where a discreet and mournful piano is followed by an ascending and profoundly uplifting howl probably not unlike the sound of a soul being crushed; by the time the song ends in a crash of chaotic drums and a crescendo of violins you feel emotionally drained and almost physically exhausted.
So when the deep shuddering bass and wailing melancholy vocals of ‘Olsen Olsen’ kick in it’s like being able to inhale oxygen again – the potent emotional stimulation has abated and by the end of the track you’re singing along as if you’d stumbled into some genial and erudite bier keller in downtown Rekyavik.
The penultimate title track completes the album faultlessly. It’s the pacifier, the track that leaves you feeling calmer, more informed and happier than when you started. It’s a slow and melodic reflection on all that has passed before and a perfect mediator between the beautiful and emotionally coherent world created by Sigur Rós and the transition back to your life. Perhaps it’s appropriate that, for the majority of this track, the language it is sung in is utter nonsense. A bit like the lives we are returning to, I suppose.
It may only be music after all but what would our pop existentialists make of it all? Richard Dawkins might say that Agaetis Byrjun’ is like a melancholy lament for the Godless lives we lead, administered with a subtle and sensitive caress by Sigur Rós whereas ‘Hell With The Lid Off’ is like a parable for the lives we would lead if we were not endowed with the unique human characteristic of altruism – bludgeoned into us by a psychotic nihilist. Maybe. Alternatively, he might just say that he really digs their shit and you kids should seek it out and dig their shit too.
Duncan Gordon
Duncan Gordon
is a designer,
writer
& blighter.
………………………………….
MC 900 ft Jesus
Read more: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3493400062.html
Listen more: MC 900ft Jesus, Welcome To My Dream: “Falling Elevators”, “The City Sleeps”
MC 900ft Jesus, One Step Ahead Of The Spider: “New Moon”, “Buried At Sea”, “Bill’s Dream”
Sigur Ros
Read more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ágætis_byrjun
Listen more: Múm “Finally We Are No One” album
ISAN “Meet Next Life” album
Various Artists: “Music for Hairy Scary Monsters (A Morr Music Sampler) album
Watch more: Heima
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