At least, that's what's stenciled on the bathrooms at the bar where I DJ on Sundays. I don't understand it either. I just put on Tracy + the Plastics' Culture for Pigeon for the first time, a title that seems suspiciously related to said propaganda. (Is there a revolution afoot? A real life 12 Monkeys plot?) I also do not understand Culture for Pigeon, but only three songs in I love it with a fierceness. I am trying to put my finger on what it is that appeals so furiously and immediately, and I think it is this: for all of its ostensible lo-fi simplicity, there's an incredibly rich (I do not want to use a loaded word like "sophisticated") sense of space to it. On a track like "Henrietta," voices jump out at you like ghostbots in a carnival haunted house, and you think, "Where did that come from?" as they slip back into a velvet nothingness. Meanwhile all the blurpy bass patter and prickly hi hats offer a similarly three-dimensional perspective, as though mapping out a blackness with sonar and putting you at the pilot's controls. Instead of charting objects on a screen, though, the music registers them on your skin, turning the world instantly, simultaneously, alien and intimate.
Posted by philip at March 1, 2004 12:08 PM