Antipop

So I listened to Primus' Antipop for the third time ever today, and I remembered why I pretty much never listen to it. It's atrocious. It doesn't even sound like Primus. I mean no wonder why the band went on hiatus after this album. It's not the heavy influence of outsiders & their production, it's not that simple. Hell, the song produced by Fred Durst is actually one of the best songs on the album, the nu-metal aggression keeps it afloat. Everything that makes Primus "Primus" is completely gone. Les Claypool's bass playing doesn't drive any of the songs, or stick out in that cartoony, Claypool angular fashion. It's just gratuitous, "hey look at these chops" slap bass. Larry LaLonde no longer has funky, staccato bass to work off of, and just riffs along with Tom Morello & James Hetfield. That dynamic that defines Primus is nowhere to be found. Not to mention Claypool's lyrics are no longer perverse or surreal, they're just all around contrived & weak.

Can we pretend this album never happened? That's pretty much what I've been doing. I mean Animals Should Not Try To Act Like People more or less picks up immediately where Tales From The Punchbowl left off. And I'm thankful for that, as Animals is the band at their best. How or why Antipop ever happened is one hell of a mystery to me, it reeks of contractual obligations, but I don't want to spend too much time thinking about it. I just want to forget it.

It's THEM

Themselves - The No Music. (2002) on Anticon

1. Home Work
2. Mouthful
3. Good People Check
4. Poison Pit
5. Live Trap
6. Only Child Explosion
7. Paging Dr. Moon Or Gun
8. Dark Sky Demo
9. You Devil You
10. Out In The Open
11. Hat In The Wind

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?nec3hdi12mt

Themselves is gonna drop a FREE mixtape this week over at anticon. They've leaked some previews, over at pitchfork & XLR8R, which I can't stop listening to. It's also caused me to spin The No Music. nonstop as well.

The mixtape & following album are probably the most anticipated projects of 2009, simply because Themselves haven't released a new album since The No Music. Dose One & Jel have been busy with Subtle since then, and only returned to Themselves with the band Notwist, forming the group 13 & God. So this year marks the first time we get to hear Themselves with fresh production. Their 1999 debut Them is too raw for my tastes (as is the case with nearly all early anticon), and The No Music.'s production is better, but still murkier than what you'd like.

Despite the production, this album is still irresistible. It's pretty debatable if it's hip-hop or not, since Jel's soundscapes do more than blur lines. Dose's prose is stream-of-conscious at it's rawest, stream-of-subconscious would be a more appropriate term. He admits to things in rhyme that most people won't even admit to themselves. This is more avant garde than your standard anticon album, which says a lot, but more importantly, nothing compares.