this land is your land spring 2002 review

O Lamm "snow party " CD Active Suspension

We've been playing this CD alot lately. It is hard to get a handle on. It is clearly rhythmic and loopy, but there are some lovely wonderful things going on that are hard to explain.

It is a messy work in many ways, but messy in the same way as a good old apartment filled with books and records and scraps and photos from several years of optimistic collection. Not to say it is a hotch potch, as FdW might say, rather it displays the open, yet selective taste of an active connoisseur.

The first half of the record bounces around like Madeline on a school trip, before settling down to movements beloved to Ranma 1/2: karate chopping yet oddly feminine, and the female hero kicks ass. Slight humming punctuates a spring day in Pigalle, the children of tourists are playing and speaking languages that the natives do not understand. But someone must understand them, because they keep on yelling just the same. The end of the CD directs street cleaning machines and kick boxers together for a peaceful ride on the Seine to the sea side. They are riding in the lower decks, watching the view from a small round port window that sometimes goes underwater. When they arrive to the open sea, they turn on the television and fall asleep to an old sci fi movie.

Funny, because O. Lamm is pessimistic these days: he was complaining to us just last weekend about the cultural elite in Paris -- an oily bunch. Funny, because this CD is all rainbows, or is there some smog in there too, hidden in the wind?

 

a. bergman

This Land is Your Land

aaland@luckykitchen.com

Spain 2002