Word: rhythm
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...electronica, busting out all over the place with the joy of being retrospective and fresh and whimsical. Odd pieces were all there--funk, jazz, roots rock, old-school rap, nonsense lyrics--but suddenly they sounded compatible, credible and organic. The self-proclaimed loser was suddenly "the enchanting wizard of rhythm," devouring and reinventing 50 years of American pop music in one democratic bite. If Beck had lassoed the presumed spirit of Generation-X cool with his way-ward loser persona, the massive sound collage of Odelay put Beck even a step ahead of the zeitgeist. This was the sound...
...This is not an anomalous occurrence on the album, as the different tracks are just names given to indistinguishable parts of a single, seemingly interminable song that composes the whole of Experiment Below. Six minutes into the album, Hovercraft demonstrates promising innovations and intricate, sudden and powerful changes in rhythm and volume. Even the lack of track closure initially appears to be interesting and unconventional. After another six minutes, these novelties become tiresome, predictable, and downright annoying. The listener becomes totally desensitized from the sudden climaxes, and the apparent randomness of the first track reveals itself as the single creative...
Hovercraft still attempts to keep their sound fresh in each track. The subtlety of variation is completely overshadowed by the overall predictability, despite the intensity and suddenness of the rhythm changes and the unconventional use of sound distortions and samples instead of vocals. At times, the tracks are almost indistinguishable from one another, even in comparison to the most repetitive techno or punk; Hovercraft often makes The Ramones look ingenious. The band must have painstakingly tried to think of new, fresh elements to add to each successive song, but these efforts were unsuccessful...
Technology may define the show but does not dominate it; O swims and soars to its own uniquely beguiling rhythm. The individual acts summon innocent gasps from the crowd. How can one acrobat hang so gracefully from another when the two are attached only by their feet? How can one trapeze artist catch another when their apparatus, a ghostly pirate ship in midair, is rocking so vigorously? How does a little princess balance on her head while her trapeze bar revolves high over the pool? And that fellow reading a newspaper--doesn't he realize that his hat, shoes, pants...
...movie sees this emotional colorizing as a good thing. Waking from the prolonged childhood of the '50s (when Ike was the omnipotent dad), America attended to the culture bubbling under its consciousness--to rhythm and blues, to Lenny Bruce and Redd Foxx, to Lolita and Lady Chatterley's Lover--and took a heroic leap into the enthralling unknown, the flourishing of art, the liberation of race and gender. Yet it can also be argued that the opening of those emotional pores brought a more debased culture: drug epidemics, teen pregnancy, splatter movies, penis-size jokes on every sitcom, Marilyn Manson...