The big secret about most of this newfangled "electronica" of today is how conservative it is: add a few disco beats to the noodlings of 70s Dinorock bands like Yes and Gentle Giant, sprinkle with a bit of neo-hippie, pagan philosophy gussied up for the millennium, and shazam!: you've got "electronica," the great new movement designed to make the world a better place, or at least a better place for those with the cash to buy the new Orb CD.
While there is never a shortage of people out there on both sides of the music biz ready to try and profit from the public's gullibility, certain types really *are* keeping the light of true musical experimentation burning. Thus we have the appropriately named Exp, whose leader, the singularly named keyboardist Paris, treats us to a bit of truly 'alternative' music in the sense of the term before it became synonymous with jangly guitars and goofy grins. Paris, a frequent collaborator of decadent dark-rock dandy Rozz Williams (who returns the favour here by playing bass), pays homage here to truly experimental music ranging from Throbbing Gristle, Ornette Coleman, Whitehouse and Dead Can Dance with this challenging debut CD.
Like all truly experimental music, Exp veers between the sublime and the obnoxious, risking the alienation of the audience in a way all too seldom attempted in these user-friendly, corporate days when most rock bands seem indistinguishable from Wall Street bankers. More often than not, however, I find myself being drawn in here by the mantra-like rhythms which help lend order to the internal chaos of tracks like "The Cannibal Banquets" and "A Brummal Hare." There is an addictve, creeping sense of dread which gnaws at the edges of this stuff, even when at its most seductive: one of the album's high points is an inspired, appropriately eerie and unsettling French-language reading of Jacques Brel's "Ne Me Quitte Pas," a lounge standard often inaccurately translanted into English as "If You Go Away."
Here, then, is a truly adventurous, eclectic listening experience, one which rewards the listener looking for something far more than mere passive and predictable "entertainment." Quite frankly, I'd rather listen to the transporting neo-classical strains of "Jackal," featuring the haunting, ethereal strains of vocalist Dorianda interwoven with some booming, echoed grand piano playing from Paris, than to anything from Daft Punk. Exp demands involvement on the part of the listener, not mere acquiesence to some ill-conceived, passing fad. Cheers to Paris and company for keeping the spirit of musical invention alive.
