Neptune – Silent Partner
Artist: Neptune
Title: Silent Partner
Catalog Number: NS 013
Format: CD, LP, MP3, FLAC
Street Date: October 11th, 2011
There’s probably not much to say about punk’s continued existence. Like jazz or sitcoms or party politics, it just carries on eating and breathing and shitting and propogating. It’s only interesting when someone comes along trying to advance the form. Like “Arrested Development” or Dennis Kucinich, they’re usually forgotten.
This would all be relevant if Neptune were a punk band, which we’re not at all sure is the case. They create a sense of undermining the status quo, which is pretty punk, but then they screw things up by undermining the punk status quo. They’re not really a guitar band, although they do play guitars of a sort, handcrafted by Boston sculptor and founder Jason Sidney Sanford. But they’ve also covered the Go Go’s, which isn’t punk, not really.
Recorded at Machines With Magnets, the same studio employed by Battles, The Psychic Paramount, and The Skull Defekts, “Silent Partner” pushes Neptune up to two dozen releases over 15 years, and finds them continuing to push their electrified, rhythmic sound while staying true to what has always made them evocative. They’re too musical to be a noise band, and yet the noises they make are never quite recognizable. Having lost drummer Daniel Paul Boucher in 2009, Sanford and Mark William Pearson made the counter-intuitive decision to focus on making an album heavy on drums. With Kevin Emil Micka (Animal Hospital) and Farhad Alexander Ebrahimi (Big Bear), they envisioned a new sort of drum thing for Neptune and devised a new arsenal of instruments – not least of which is feedback machine devised out of a prototyped yoga ball. There’s also amplified bicycle spokes and drum-triggered oscillators.
And yet, it’s a tightly controlled sonic environment. The eight-minute “Cash Mattress” might be a display of sonic creation, but when they come around to the simple rock of “Canine Spaces” the sound is familiar, even if the sounds comprising it aren’t. Neptune is not dealing in willful avant-gardism. They are creating out of necessity. They’re crafting new rock where the old one won’t do. Excitement’s at play.
Featured Artists:
Jason Sidney Sanford: vocals, low-end guitar, railroad spike, bicycle crank arm, spoke protectors, spring, whistle, electronic noise generator, aluminum bowls and plates
Mark William Pearson: oscillator organ, baritone guitar, amplified toms, drums, percussion, suitcase, aluminum bowls and plates
Kevin Emil Micka: drums, percussion, drum-triggered electronics, vocals, oscillators, radio, aluminum bowls and plates
Farhad Alexander Ebrahimi: drums, amplified drums, percussion, amplified bell, voltage-controlled oscillators, vocals, triggered electonics, feedback membrane, aluminum discs and bowls
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Tracks & Samples
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Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
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Press Quotes:
This is the future arrived, in ways that Eisenhower and Kennedy did not foresee. You know about that future. You are in it. Here’s its music. – Gapplegate
“a seriously creeping electronic slow burn and screech that has to rank right up there with their greatest accomplishments” – Boston Hassle
“As noisy and thrilling as ever” - Love and Mathematics, 90.3 WZBC, Newton MA
Neptune – “Cash Mattress”
Neptune play their song “Cash Mattress” at Great Scott in Allston, MA on April 4th, 2011.