Editorial Reviews
Music Review:
Music Review
Classical Treasures: Classics for Meditation
C.P.E. Bach: Orchestral Symphonies
Music: Arabian Masters [Import]
Bride of the Wind / Fleming, Thibaudet, Endelman (2001 Film) [Soundtrack]
Amazon.com
Seattle’s A-Frames bash out a bizarrely mechanistic, droning, minimalist, postmodern art-punk that steals equally from Amon Duul I, Chrome, Cramps, PIL, Pop Group, Swell Maps, and (the Australian) X. With such unerring taste, they could be a cover band and still entertain, but their short, steely, melodic originals stick in your head for weeks, like warning signals. Their third album, Black Forest suffers from over-production (this is a band that sounds best with Sonics-era sound), but just a wee bit. From a performance standpoint, the A-Frames are probably the most original punk rock band since the Screamers. The lyrics deadpan an unrelentingly dystopian vision of the future that seems solely cobbled from post-apocalyptic sci-fi flicks and comic books. Their songs are about machines turned against mankind, viruses out of control, surveillance technologies run amok, a world where humans have become extinct. Such schtick would quickly bore in lesser mortals' hands, but the oft-misunderstood A-Frames never lose face. There is something of Andy Kaufman in them, something very close to actual genius. --Mike McGonigal
Album Description
Having cut their musical teeth many years prior on bands like Cows, Butthole Surfers, and Scratch Acid, Seattle's A Frames formed during the late 1990s and designed their own brand of stripped-down neo-modern experimental noise. Angular, angry guitars and bleak, deadpan lyrics march over robotic trashcan beats. Minimalist, propulsive songs about apocalyptic cultural shifts and surveillance strategies. Their third full-length and first for Sub Pop retains the rawness of their earlier releases.