I guess things move on either through gradual evolution or sudden revolution. If so, this oddly titled album from School of the Americas certainly falls into the latter category. Perhaps better described as a collection of sound collages, sonic statements and musical experiments rather than anything resembling a traditional album, it does to the song form what rave did to live performance, what punk did to musicality and what hip-hop did for sampling and creative recycling.
These songs, which often feel like anagrams of the traditional form, perhaps even a Frankenstein’s Monster of samples and sonic reappropriation, also asks us interesting questions. Questions such as when does a song move into the realms of art, art into the category of noise and noise into philosophical statement.
Many of these short, sharp and shockingly unique creations have the essence of spinning the dial on a radio or channel hopping on the TV and seeing what sounds emenate from such a fast and furious rotation. Maybe not songs as such but certainly fascinating ways of making music/art/noise and who knows whose mind they might trigger a reaction in, which creative barricades they might knock down and which door ways they might open for future music makers and art attackers to step through.
Odd? Yes. Important? I’d say so.
