album // Landing
Githead's third album comes adorned
with a picture of a jet plane and a title that initially leads to
thoughts of dubious Seventies concept albums. The band, consisting
of Wire's Colin Newman, Swim~ co-owner Malka
Spigel (aka Maya Newman), Robin
Rimbaud (aka Scanner) and drummer Max Franken
are quick to refute any such suggestion.
'The travel thing is a given,' says Newman. 'We
do travel a lot and there's a picture of a plane on the cover but
these things are kind of co-incidental in many ways.'
'As you create something you find connections in
a similar way that a listener might,' adds Spigel. 'These arise
in an organic way rather than something planned.'
Rimbaud provides his own vision of the album's genesis:
'I think concepts were far from our minds in the natural development
of this recording. We are though interested in this static field
of sound where everything is moving underneath the surface, maintaining
a linear feel, never erupting but constantly bubbling with a tight
energy, and it's within this immersive sound world that even the
subtlest of changes can seem significant.'
'The only concept we started with was to make an
album better than the last one,' concludes Newman.
The album begins with the frantic instrumental 'Faster',
which possesses some of the angriest bass playing ever committed
to record, while 'Take Off' adds detached vocals from Malka and
characteristically grinding guitar textures with more melodic hooks
from Newman and Rimbaud. 'Before Tomorrow', a low-slung and edgy
piece with vocals from Newman embodies his particular brand of wide-eyed
wonderment. 'Landing' slows things down with a gritty, dirty groove
and spirals of guitar patterns while Spigel turns in an unexpectedly
euphoric chorus.
The partly spoken-word 'Ride' is perhaps the biggest
departure from the band's previous work. Here, Franken delivers
alternating patterns of delicate drums during the tracks slow build,
coalescing into a more motorik piece by the song's fade, Malka murmuring
'game over' as spiky guitars nudge toward the conclusion. 'Over
The Limit' on the other hand could have sat comfortably on Wire's
Send, with Newman practically spitting monotone epithets
over a gritty punk backdrop.
'Lightswimmer' borrows what sounds like the staccato
guitar pattern from Wire's '40 Versions' (from 154) with
thunderous bass and a muted vocal urgency from Spigel not evidenced
in many other places on this album. The track descends into some
pleasantly controlled distortion and feedback, which is never a
bad thing in my book. 'From My Perspective' is one of my favourite
tracks on Landing, an upbeat slice of poppy-punk rock with an bouncing
elastic bassline.
The urgent 'Displacement & Time' creates a happy
marriage between the fast-paced dub techno of, say, Dreadzone at
their best, and carefully distorted rock, while the seven minute
'Transmission Tower' has an emotional undercurrent that hardens
and becomes more muscular and faster as the track progresses, until
finally it dissolves into buzzing phased feedback. It's a thrilling
conclusion to another fine album from this vital quartet. Landing
is in many ways a continuation of the precisely honed and perfected
sound that evidenced itself on Profile and Artpop,
but this time around there are differences.
'This is the most 'aware' Githead album to date,'
says Spigel. 'By awareness I mean a sense of how you want the album
to develop from the previous one. The pieces always start fairly
spontaneously.'
CD:
1. Faster
2. Take-Off
3. Before Tomorrow
4. Landing
5. Ride
6. Over The Limit
7. Lightswimmer
8. From My Perspective
9. Displacement & Time
10. Transmission Tower
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