Matthew Hale Clark/Ken Camden – Three:Four Split Series Vol. 4 10” (Three:Four)
Seeing as how we are shuffling through an era in which no one seems to remember records that came out last week, I suppose it makes an unimportant degree of sense that no one remembers the mid-decade, laughably-misguided anti-rock (“Rock is Dead,” “Indie Rock is the antithesis of inspiration,” and so on) trend that unleashed several unfortunate offshoots upon our world. One of them was responsible for landfill upon landfill of insipid, guitar-and-various-drone-spouting diddle-daddle, quite a bit of which was indistinguishable from BOTH sides of this 10”. Entire labels were dedicated to boring the shit out of listeners who were once on fire with a passion for what the same underground gave them until it turned its back on rock. It doesn’t matter what the faux-raga guitar does or doesn’t do on one of these tracks, nor does it matter what the sparse beats from some electronic shit-box do, or where they come from, or what they add to their track, because it’s not an addition if it simply joins a bunch of other instrumental afterthoughts that feel like nothing and speak to the problem of passing off a musical void as a “something.” This mouthful applies to each and every second of this 10”, as does the placement of a fucking Elk on the cover. This label is from Switzerland, so perhaps some of the blame can be absorbed by that thing they do with our cultural bric-a-brac. At times like these, I half-seriously wish that Fennesz wasn’t as good as he truly is. The delusion of similarity and shared inspiration is suffered by far too many dudes sporting guitar necklaces or hovering over folding tables of boredom-boxes. Numbered edition of 300. (http://www.three-four.net)
(Andrew Earles)
