Label: Brilliante
Released: May 3, 2005 |
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| It Used To Be Knobs and Machines and Now It's Numbers and Light |  |
| > Sharks & Seals |
by Chad Schell-McGaw |
The question is whether it is better to try to forge new ground, assuming that new is always better, or to rely on established forms and wear in the path of mediocrity, circumnavigating nowhere, defeated by memory. All I know is that if Sharks and Seals are leading the expedition, I’m headed for the slow circle.
On their debut release on Chicago’s Brilliante Records, entitled It Used To Be Knobs and Machines and Now It’s Numbers and Light, Joe Tricoli and Todd Matei, both former guitarists for that other failed expedition, Joan of Arc, whose remains were rumored to have been found at the bottom of The Gap, bring what started as an “entertaining experiment” in improvisational composition and with the help of friends like Captain Arc himself, Tim Kinsella, has become a purchasable test of patience. The biggest problem here is that they have mistaken a good idea with something that is actually good, and actually something, and that while there are moments throughout the album that would be nice in songs, these are not songs. Now I won’t pretend to traffic in improvisational knowledge or taste, but having ears I know that there are some who can do this kind of thing listenably- whether a jazz legend, the free jazz version of Spinal Tap, or your local park’s hippie drum circle- and there are those who cannot. Not all entertaining experiments, gentlemen, need be mass distributed to strangers.
While fans of the Animal Collective’s more tryingly wandersome work or of Kinsella’s many sufferable experiments may be right now wetting their pants making homemade Sharks and Seals t-shirts that in some abstract destructionist way manage to still be band shirts while not in any way mentioning or suggesting the band’s name, all while repeatedly reciting “it used to be knobs and machines and now it’s numbers and light” over and over in some Gertude Stein-like mantra, everyone else is better off spending their time reading the next review.
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