AudioShocker

I’d like to start once again this week with something from several months ago, Portishead’s most recent album, Third. It is not my intention to write an album review here; rather, I’d like to point out something, which is obvious about it, that I find to be interesting, namely, its many tracks which straddle several genres of music. Now, I suppose it’s the case that genre-fusing is an aspect inherent to electronica music as a whole, so maybe it’s not that big a deal, but there are tracks on this disc that are incredibly solid examples of working up songs across several genres, while keeping the album itself a unified whole.

For example, the track 4, “The Rip,” a galloping Western. Sounds to me like a long version of any given Western TV show from yesteryear, but with just enough contemporary synth sounds to keep from being a mere exercise in retro-styled music. Again, I don’t want to go on and on about the music here; go listen to it, if you haven’t heard it already, it’s easy enough to hear. Another great example of what I’m talking about is the track 8, “Machine Gun,” aptly named for the rapid-fire sounds of its introduction. But this song sounds like it could have been lifted right out of Terminator (which, as you’ll recall from an earlier “Things it is Okay to Like” is one of Arnold’s finest movies). I’m actually a huge fan of the synth scores from the ‘70s into the mid-80s, and once this track switches into it’s final section with the epic melody rising up over the jarring underlying music, damn, it’s like the past’s future is here again. And finally, I’ll mention track 9, “Small” for its awesome organ-heavy stoner jams.

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