Third Eye Foundation
Little Lost Soul
[Merge]
Rating: 5.9
Last night, I dreamt that my roommate and I bought too much swordfish to cook for
dinner. Except it was one of those nights when what we referred to as "swordfish"
took the form of a giant slab of ground beef. The bloody hunk of meat covered
three square feet of counter space and towered six inches thick, and after
preparing a small portion, we were left at a loss as to what to do with the unruly
leftovers. Since it's unsanitary to keep so much raw meat in the fridge, we were
faced with only two options: we could either cook the rest of it and pack up the
tamed result in Tupperware, or better yet, we could look into returning the unused
portion to the supermarket.
Naturally, I felt extremely uncomfortable with the idea of returning the meat.
We'd already handled it and eaten part of it. It was left at room temperature
for 20 minutes! If the Stop & Shop took it back and sold it to another customer,
what would that say about where the meat had already been when we purchased it?
I woke up in a cold sweat with clenched teeth and my nails driven into my palms.
As a long time vegetarian who recently began experimenting with fish, the excess of
bloody carnage I referred to as swordfish seemed somewhat creepy, as it hinted that,
in my waking hours, I might naively be consuming a "gateway meat." Yes, I'm
concerned that eating swordfish will lead first to "harder meats," and eventually
to heroin addiction. Third Eye Foundation's Little Lost Soul is a soundtrack
for such nightmares.
Just kidding! Like fellow Bristol natives Portishead, the Third Eye Foundation
(otherwise known as TEF, 3EF, or Matt Elliot) is endlessly compared to soundtracks
of nightmares, creepy sleepless nights, and haunting films that haven't been made.
Entertainment Weekly called Third Eye Foundation's music "like a soundtrack
to some great lost surrealist film." Flagpole writes that Elliot, who
collaborated with Flying Saucer Attack in their earlier days, comes up with "some
most disturbing dream soundtracks." Wasn't this cliché beaten into submission like
three years ago?
Third Eye Foundation's third full-length on Merge can be aptly described with
the vocabulary of nightmares. That is, the album's mood could be described as
"haunted," "lonely," "lingering urban darkness," "chilling ambient constructions of
uncertain sonic terrain," "layers of bleak drones that crumble under breakbeats and
digital bleeps," "spooky pastiche," "eerie," and "otherworldly." But any respectable
nightmare isn't comprised of haunted-house synths and spooky loops of minor-key
drones. Truly disturbing dreams are made of uncomfortable pacing, plodding
anticipation, and disarming juxtapositions. And that's what's missing from Little
Lost Soul.
A lack of reference to relevant cultural narratives is what separates Little
Lost Soul's innocuously pleasant spook-out from albums like Endtroducing
that manipulate you into sonic spaces in which you might feel hesitant to step
forward before finding yourself pushed. DJ Shadow's uncomfortably alluring
concoction of cultural references and urban found-sound tag-teamed familiar beats
with cinematic pacing. Clearly, it has a far greater chance of approximating the
world of dreams than bent drones and choirgirl vocals run through reverb pedals.
When Matt Elliot rid himself of the rougher textures and harder jungle beats of his
1997 LP, Ghost, some of Third Eye Foundation's nervous energy was traded in
for a sound palate that shared more than just a few tricks with the more goth end of
the new age spectrum. On Little Lost Soul, Elliot has pointlessly sugared the
pill with smoother production, and as a result, the album lacks the power of the
dreamworlds its eerie textures allude to. Personally, I'd rather swallow the less
refined Ghost. If we're going to sugar the pill, it better not be a placebo.
-Kristin Sage Rockermann