This is where I get to spout off my useless opinion about more-than-likely-obscure music. It really won't be in any particular order as far as releases go. No one is forcing you to read this, and no one is forcing you to listen to any of it. Enjoy if you want.

Menomena's Under An Hour

I suppose if I were really serious about this, I would write something about Menomena's first album, I Am The Fun Blame Monster, first. But this really isn't anything serious, and I'm listening to Under An Hour as I type this, and it would seriously kill my groove to switch to Blame Monster in the middle of some great shit.

Menomena (link) is a fairly odd band in that they don't make their music in the conventional fashion. Their approach to songmaking involves custom-built software...the kind that would have been right up my alley when I was actually interested in programming. What they do is record a jam, feed it into their software, which is apparently a sophisticated loop-based program. They loop a section and then expound upon that. Once they have it figured out, they relearn their song and rerecord it the old fashioned way.

The loop-based nature of their songs do lend to them being repetitive and not having much in the way of resolution. However, this isn't necessarily a bad thing (though my high school band director would disagree and disown me for saying so). There is a great deal of variation weaving in and out, giving a very hypnotic feel even in the more high-energy songs. Every Menomena song is a deep sonic exploration of a simple musical line. Wow...I really am starting to sound like a pretentious music fuck now. Hooray pretenses!

Well, so much for diving straight into the album. However, I'm doing it now. Hold onto your hats.

Under An Hour, Menomena's second album, is actually a piece for modern dance in three movements: Water, Flour, and Light. If you look on their website, they actually have pictures of the dancers performing, and yes, they danced with water, flour, and light as their props, which is actually kind of sexy...well, at least the water bit. The flour concept just sounds messy.

The first track, Water, starts off suspenseful with banjos, bells, piano, some organs, and a guitar with lots of effects. Their orchestration is as weird and beautiful as Mike Oldfield's old stuff from the seventies...although honestly, this track reminds me a lot of Amarok (also a Mike Oldfield album, but from 1990) without all the shit he put in to annoy Richard Branson...and the fancy guitar work. The suspense of the first part blooms into a fairly lively section, and then goes to a more stately section that hints at the lively theme while it slowly transitions back to the suspenseful feel. All in all, Water is a superb track.

Flour, the second and middle track, is much more reptitive than Water, and includes a fairly slow and steady stacatto with piano and saxophone through large chunks of it. That's why it's a middle track, I bet. You remember those sonic explorations I was talking about? This is one of them. Once again, I'm not saying it's bad. It's still a beautiful track, but you should be forewarned that this track is pretty much the same theme elaborated for about 19 minutes. I will say, though, that this track and The Lost Art of Keeping a Secret by Queens of the Stone Age have renewed some of my confidence in the use of saxophones. I hate the whiney nature of their tone, but they are awesome when used as a rhythm instrument to provide extra texture. I'm sure saxophonists everywhere will take offense to this view, though.

The final track, entitled Light, is more electronic-sounding. Whereas the other two sound like they could conceivably be played live all the way through, this one has sections that verge on being techno or industrial. Light starts off with lots of ambient guitar noise, but dies down to some fret noise sequenced in a rhythm. Then the other samples come in, like they used a bunch of guitar noises in a drum machine...and then the real drum sounds come in, possibly sequenced in the same fashion. It's quite groovy. All that dies down to a repeating piano theme that builds into a kind of goth-industrial type groove until the end. This one's yet another superb track.

So...was this a review or an analysis? Probably both. I just really enjoyed this album, and writing this gave me an excuse to listen to it twice in one night. Basically, if you like beautifully textured sonic explorations, or if you're feeling in the mood to do some sort of interpretive dance, Under An Hour may be for you. And, true to its word, Under An Hour is indeed under an hour. It's 54 and a half minutes of an ear feast.