Bump & Grind
Init Sequence
[Sub Rosa]
Rating: 4.8
It's too marvelous the way human spirit searches out new ways of combining
familiar things-- stuff lying around in the yard (the Wright Brothers' Kitty
Hawk), around the office (Robert Oppenheimer's little sun), or out in the
corn field (Albert Hofmann and his synthesized ergot fungus). And sometimes,
these radical combinations renew civilizations. Take the Florentine Renaissance:
scholars bored with the dry whitterings of Aquinas went to the local library,
picked up some poems of Ovid and a little bit of Livy, and boom! Before
Lucrezia had time enough to knock off another relative, the Old World is off on
the fast track to the Enlightenment and the birth of the United States of
America.
Sometimes, though, combinations don't work out. How many unpalatable creations
has humanity suffered the after-effects of in order to come up with the few
that are greater than the sum of their constituents? Personally, I'm fervidly
opposed to mixing viands with fruit. Cranberries belong in a vodka drink, not
dolloped next to a slice of turkey breast. Similarly, mint belongs in a Tic Tac
lozenge or a julep, not nestling up against a juicy cut of erstwhile gamboling,
bleating lamb.
Bump & Grind have tried their hand at combination, but rather than being the
sublime fusion of juniper berry and ethanol, Init Sequence is far more
akin to a by-product of the fractional distillation of crude oil. The band
have attempted melding pretentious soundtrack music with big beat, and the
result is a clumsy reduction of both elements. The pleasure (note the singular)
of big beat is its shameless loutishness. It's beery, good-time, rugger-bugger
dance music for people who still think that dancing's for right poofs. And as
such, it succeeds marvelously. But mixing big beat's Rolling Rock flatulence
with Angelika Film Center soundscapes grovels for trouble on bended knee.
"Intuition Outerspace" combines home-listening, arty drum-n-bass with the
installation sounds associated with Sub Rosa artists like Tone Rec.
The track, like many on this album, is not only burdened by its title.
"Mellow Tek" whooshes ambiently and excerpts heavily reverbed dialog before
the heartbeat kickdrum swaggers through the remaining four minutes of the
track to little effect. Contrarily, the Tom Waits-meets-Boards of Canada blues
of "Chromatic Hipster Heaven" sticks around for a mere sixty seconds-– just
enough time for us to get totally jazzed about this combination-- before
Bump & Grind bring on the blurpy, soggy electro of "Refresh Rate."
Tacked on after "Nowadays Instant Plug" are remixes by Scanner and Third
Eye Foundation. Scanner lays down his usual high-pitch squeals and low
rumblings, turning "Hooked Atoms" into a shufflesome affair redolent of his
own "Mass Observation" track. Third Eye Matt Elliot, naturally, puts the
whole of Init Sequence to shame with his truly cinematographic
rework of "Pan Odyssey." But hearing his remix just makes me want to listen
to Third Eye Foundation's Little Lost Soul and reacquaint myself with
Elliot's perfect fusion of Grooverider and Gorecki.
Though Init Sequence is far from unlistenable, Bump & Grind, on the
evidence of this album, are not sure whether to laugh it up with the Midfield
General or strike Dieter poses while discussing Werner Herzog. You can do one
or the other, but attempting both is bound to end in tears.
-Paul Cooper