Rectoplasm- Lemuria!
(Avant-Guano Productions)
Rectoplasm- Lemuria!
(Avant-Guano Productions)
From Aural Innovations #39 (May 2008)
As far as concept albums go, Rectoplasm’s Lemuria! (subtitled “Songs
from a Sunken Continent”) is one of the stranger ones you’ll ever
hear, certainly on a par—at least conceptually—with anything their
spiritual brethren The Residents have produced. As with most avant-rock that
aspires to ironic profundity by intentionally undercutting the seriousness of
the conceptual apparatus that supports and sustains the music itself, the ten
songs on Lemuria! tread a very fine line between tongue-in-cheek pomposity and
mock high brow pretensions to artistic and cultural relevance. But again like
The Residents, what ultimately justifies Rectoplasm as a purveyor of postmodern
art/music is the group’s unwillingness to draw such purely academic distinctions.
The suitably arcane text that accompanies Lemuria! Only serves to enhance the
almost Zappa-esque satire that the music itself documents and parodies. Briefly
stated, the songs on Lemuria! are contemporary recreations of the music of an
antediluvian culture that is reputed to have once thrived somewhere in the Southern
Hemisphere. Rectoplasm’s reconstruction of the sub-microtonal musical
alphabet of the Lemurians with the aid of a battery of synthesizers, percussion
instruments and other exotica such as sitar, Aeolian harp and keramophone creates
a striking rapprochement between the earthy and the otherworldly. And while
the conceptual resemblance to The Residents’ Eskimo is palpable, many
of the songs on Lemuria! display a diversity of musical influences: classical
Indian music, early Berlin school electronics, Ligeti, musique concrete, Faust
and even the driving industrial rock of Chrome are all evident throughout the
song cycle that makes up this fascinating, though at times difficult to digest,
album. Haunting, infuriating, trance-inducing, disturbing, pretentious, amusing,
hermetic—Lemuria! never fails to evoke a myriad of responses from the
listener. As a consequence, dolts and oafs need not apply for admission through
these gates. However, for the musically adventurous Lemuria! is well worth your
time and investment.
YOu can visit the band web site at: http://www.myspace.com/rect0plasm
Reviewed by Charles Van de Kree