Mushroom
Foxy Music
[Innerspace; 2001]
Rating: 8.2
The scene, improbably enough, is an all-night Laundromat.
Inside, a sinewy, mustachioed fellow is tinkering with one
of the machines. His shirt reads "Mitch." Not far down a
bank of dryers, Randii and Tanya are sporting with one
another's silks and satins while their respective loads
lumber toward conclusion. Tanya tosses a pair of her unwashed
intimates in Randii's face, which Tanya proceeds to sniff--
thus foreshadowing the hot girl-on-girl action to come. By
now, Mitch is supervising the panty fight. He interrupts with
something about how sensual washers are: the wetness, the
churning, the suds. "Randii gets off on bubbles," Tanya
volunteers. "So do you, slut!" Randii retorts, before
implausibly asking Mitch how he got into this line of work.
Apparently he's always been good with his hands. Well, Tanya
wonders aloud, are you handy with that tool of yours there?
By which she is almost certainly referring to Mitch's
freakishly large trouser snake and not, I presume, the
outsized wrench he has been holding awkwardly this whole
time. At this point, Mushroom's Foxy Music begins on
cue; such is the infallible logic of porn.
Space-rock has almost always been something of a jack-off: a
remote, phallocentric, cerebral trafficking in fantasy,
produced and consumed largely by the usual host of Moog
aficionados, fluent Klingon speakers and hobbits. But
Mushroom's thrilling 1999 space-psych-jazz-rock fusion
opus, Analog Hi-Fi Surprise managed to bring some
much-needed levity and play to the genre. Mushroom tossed
the analog weirdness of Füxa, and the jagged experimentalism
of Can into a dark, smoking concoction alongside acid-fried
Funkadelic, Jack Johnson-style Miles Davis and even
some groove-addled Medeski, Martin & Wood. The result was
some of the most instantly accessible outrock around,
exploratory, up and infectious.
Following up the muddy and somewhat ill-conceived remix
album, Compared to What (which featured Foxy Music
snippets doctored by the likes of post-rock luminary Bundy K.
Brown and Faust's Hans Joachim Irmler), Mushroom have
transcended the interplanetary party music of Analog
Hi-Fi Surprise and produced something downright luscious.
The aptly titled Foxy Music melds pornographic funk,
searing kraut, lounge-lizard exotica and swirling fusion
into something hotter than the go-go girl who graces the
album cover.
The shimmering Hammond B-3 that opens "Grooving with Herbie"
returns us to the porno script treatment where we began.
Flute and cornet blow acid-jazz loops over Patrick O'Hearn's
incredibly tight drumming while the organ rumbles underfoot.
"Grooving with Herbie" is a clean and crisp foray into funky
exotica, conjuring images of lotions and lava lamps, silk
robes, gel lighting and sex bereft of awkwardness.
"The Greatest Pleasure in Life Is Doing What People Say You
Can Not Do" is a smoldering mix of garage-psychedelia and
dark, smoky jazz. The walking bassline and squawking trombone
mingle with Michael Bluestein's intensely bluesy organ.
Guitars tweak and wail in the margins. The drumming begins
to stutter and loop backwards as "I Got Blisters on My
Fingers" erupts into bright, distorted guitars reminiscent
of the recently departed Michael Karoli's squiggly fusion
guitar work on Can's Ege Bamyasi. Michael Holt's
Rhodes keyboards are simultaneously rootsy and otherworldly.
The explosive "I Got Blisters" marries psychedelic blues and
experimental kraut masterfully, on top of which Erik Pearson
manages to make the flute sound ferocious. It's rich and
trippy party music for ass and head.
Jon Birdsong's tuba is the standout in the strutting "Joe
Namath." The fuzzy and dubby "Namath" creates a preening,
cocky swagger with the unlikely elements of sitar, whining
feedback, marching band horns, and delirious guitar shred.
The carnivalesque and tweaky title track has so little
subtlety it might as well ask you your sign. Foxy Music
is noisy, hot and dirty, with Allison Faith Levy's breathy,
indecipherable vocals packed into a crowd of screeching
violin, electronics, Oberheim processed guitars and furious
percussion. The whole thing writhes on the floor like group
sex: sleazy, beautiful and breathtaking. You're never quite
sure what plugs into what.
Mushroom's instinctual experimentalism remains intact
throughout Foxy Music despite the bright, insatiable
thrust of the album. "Getting in Thun" is a strange soupy
throb of subsonic bass drone and eerily clanging church bells.
"Don't Blame Me, I Voted for McGovern" lays a dark,
paramilitary stomp beneath warped organs, recalling the
unbreakable fusion of prog and fascism that seemed to infest
Roger Waters' brain throughout the late 70s. But "Don't Blame
Me," thankfully, serves only as a chilling (albeit muddled)
interlude in an otherwise recklessly optimistic album.
All the album titles on Foxy Music seem plucked
straight out of the pop cultural lexicon of the late 60s and
early 70s, a time that's already been more carelessly
romanticized than any other in modern American history. Yet
everyone but the staunchest conservatives are willing to
forgive artists for conjuring a mythic time when love was
free and sex might just have been revolutionary. So who cares
if Mushroom want to indulge in a little escapism? Sex in all
its beauty, awkwardness, messiness and danger is a better
subject than gnomes and nebulae. Mushroom (along with the
inimitable Rollerball) are at the vanguard of movement to
make experimentalism sexy again. Not a moment too soon, as
far as I'm concerned.
And for those of you waiting for some closure on my script
treatment, all I can say is this: a burly cop named Hogan
shows up soon after the initial threesome. He wants to know
what all the ruckus is about.
-Brent S. Sirota, December 19th, 2001