TRICK014
WHEN The lobster boys
Cut/collage/psychedelic/rock/pop
Released 2001
WHEN The lobster boys
Cut/collage/psychedelic/rock/pop
Released 2001
Release info/Press release
As much as WHEN is a musical "organism," confoundingly so, it also takes the crown as THE apotheosis of dynamism. A dynamism of kaleidoscopic variegation. A mechanism that carefully reviews, impishly mimics and playfully destroys its subjects into caricatures of marvel.
For nearly two decades cult cut up magician Lars Pedersen [formerly part of the legendary experimental new wavers Holy Toy] has been operating at the helm of this trans-organic maelstrom and to date there have been no WHEN efforts that appear anything less than an ideal... 'The Lobster Boys,' Pedersen's eighth full length album under the guise of WHEN, is immediate in it's assurance of this ethic. Pretending to wear its ingredients on its sleeve [literally], The Lobster Boys play a game of hide and seek on listeners. These "mock" ingredients become another level of WHEN's tomfoolery making the would be contestant search these numerous sources for imaginary elements that one insists are strewn about in riddling encryption: Aladdin, Sinbad The Sailor, The Red Shoes, Goldilocks, Sarah Vaughn, Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington, Buddy Greco, Tchaikovsky, Strauss, Segovia... the list goes on. Good luck discerning any residual hints in this bubbly puree The Lobster Boys have prepared for you!
You're on a trip that the casual traveler would insist is an eastward journey... and it is... but if you know the boys they never really leave the North, they bring it with them! The dominating melodicism seems an exotic hybrid of eastern flavors [Indo-European, Arabian, Phrygian, etc.] and Scandinavian sensibilities [which seem to NEVER leave the palette through all these years, and why should they? WHEN manages to assimilate it into even the most dissident forms peaceably.]
'The Lobster Boys' demonstrates an elegance that hasn't been tapped as significantly since "Prefab Wreckage." Elemental transparencies of a cerebral dimensionality conjugate delicately within an architectural blueprint that insists that this beast is a "pop" album.
I'm going to step out on a limb and cast 'The Lobster Boys' into the altitude of such widely proclaimed "timeless classics" as 'Pet Sounds' and 'Sgt. Pepper'... Its as adhesive, inventive and characteristic as both, while occasionally paying tribute to their evolutionary performative and compositional designs.
From the peculiar jack-in-the-box rhythmics of "Cut," "Flower Jam's" nearly spectral harnessing of summer into tone and texture, the inflating Last James-isms of "Instant Flute," the formal fusion and serpentine gestures of "Ruin Yourself" to the concluding long form surrealistic moral play "WHEN," 'The Lobster Boys' is WHEN in its most astute poise... A posture WHEN could easily hold for years to come but experience tells us that this kaleidoscope never repeats the same patterns twice so look while you can!
David Wills
As much as WHEN is a musical "organism," confoundingly so, it also takes the crown as THE apotheosis of dynamism. A dynamism of kaleidoscopic variegation. A mechanism that carefully reviews, impishly mimics and playfully destroys its subjects into caricatures of marvel.
For nearly two decades cult cut up magician Lars Pedersen [formerly part of the legendary experimental new wavers Holy Toy] has been operating at the helm of this trans-organic maelstrom and to date there have been no WHEN efforts that appear anything less than an ideal... 'The Lobster Boys,' Pedersen's eighth full length album under the guise of WHEN, is immediate in it's assurance of this ethic. Pretending to wear its ingredients on its sleeve [literally], The Lobster Boys play a game of hide and seek on listeners. These "mock" ingredients become another level of WHEN's tomfoolery making the would be contestant search these numerous sources for imaginary elements that one insists are strewn about in riddling encryption: Aladdin, Sinbad The Sailor, The Red Shoes, Goldilocks, Sarah Vaughn, Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington, Buddy Greco, Tchaikovsky, Strauss, Segovia... the list goes on. Good luck discerning any residual hints in this bubbly puree The Lobster Boys have prepared for you!
You're on a trip that the casual traveler would insist is an eastward journey... and it is... but if you know the boys they never really leave the North, they bring it with them! The dominating melodicism seems an exotic hybrid of eastern flavors [Indo-European, Arabian, Phrygian, etc.] and Scandinavian sensibilities [which seem to NEVER leave the palette through all these years, and why should they? WHEN manages to assimilate it into even the most dissident forms peaceably.]
'The Lobster Boys' demonstrates an elegance that hasn't been tapped as significantly since "Prefab Wreckage." Elemental transparencies of a cerebral dimensionality conjugate delicately within an architectural blueprint that insists that this beast is a "pop" album.
I'm going to step out on a limb and cast 'The Lobster Boys' into the altitude of such widely proclaimed "timeless classics" as 'Pet Sounds' and 'Sgt. Pepper'... Its as adhesive, inventive and characteristic as both, while occasionally paying tribute to their evolutionary performative and compositional designs.
From the peculiar jack-in-the-box rhythmics of "Cut," "Flower Jam's" nearly spectral harnessing of summer into tone and texture, the inflating Last James-isms of "Instant Flute," the formal fusion and serpentine gestures of "Ruin Yourself" to the concluding long form surrealistic moral play "WHEN," 'The Lobster Boys' is WHEN in its most astute poise... A posture WHEN could easily hold for years to come but experience tells us that this kaleidoscope never repeats the same patterns twice so look while you can!
David Wills