Black Rebel Motorcycle Club – The Effects of 333
When Black Rebel Motorcycle Club announced an upcoming independent release in the last week of October, I was pretty psyched. I am a huuuge BRMC fan; pretty much loving every single album they’ve released so far. BRMC perfect genres such as garage, soul, folk, psychedelic, and blues, are mind-blowing when they perform live, and understand the intimacy needed in music. Understandably, I’m probably being too romantic about it all, but they are just too awesome for words.
The Effects of 333 was released on November 1 (333rd day of the year–go figure). It is the first record released independently by the band from their own label, Abstract Dragon. The band announced that it would be an abstract instrumental, ambient album. Many might take such definitions very lightly. I fooled myself into thinking it would be something similar to their grounded music, just without vocals, however, the record is very abstract as detailed by the band, and unlike anything you’ve heard from them before.
The album in its entirety sounds like the ambiance of a horror flick or video game. Gyrating mechanical noises, heavy guitar delay, screeching, and other creepy sounds encompass most of the album. There are two tracks, “A Twisted State” and “And With This Comes” actually incorporate some folk guitar melody…funny enough, while these would be considered conventionally BRMC, they are out of place in this album.
While I do enjoy ambient music, taking the album into its context (for one, that it’s BRMC), it makes it more difficult to enjoy. Fans of pre-333 are in for a big surprise if they’re expecting it to be a follow-up of previous albums (guilty as charged). I have to give the band credit for surpassing the conventions of music, though. Being a big fan of BRMC, it’s hard to bad-mouth them due to bias, but I shall try to be stronger and admit that I didn’t enjoy this album as much as I thought I would. Secretly, I was thankful for the two folksy tracks to fall back on when listening times were tough, finding it hard to keep listening to one track of the creepier songs without skipping to the next. An abstract album like this requires patience and open-mindedness on the listener’s part, and if that’s missing, well there’s no chance that it’ll be well-liked. I’m a big Pink Floyd fan and I hated Ummagumma. It might be surprising considering I enjoy listening to avant-garde rock music, but there’s a huge difference in the tonality of Kayo Dot and stuff like The Effects of 333.
The thing that annoyed me the most (but made a lot of sense) was the length of the tracks. In a narrower perspective, the tracks were too long for the tonality of the album. The gyrating mechanical sounds and clanking noises go on for five to six minutes each. One track, “And When Was Better,” just contains a bunch of voices layered over each other for seven long minutes. It makes sense that it goes on for this long because it helps build the ambience, and helps strike emotion in the listener (provided they’re totally into it). But when you’re not into it in the first place, the long tracks of noise just make it harder to bear.
Now that being said, after giving this album a couple of more listens, it has grown on me. It’s not something I would consider “musically enjoyable,” but it does hit the senses once you get into it. It has a dark, lonely, and pensive demeanor that is reflected in the collective emotions of the listener. This can only happen (as said previously) if the listener is willing to let this happen. I don’t know if that’s the goal of the album, nor am I assuming that it is. It’s just something that I’ve come across re-listening to the album. I believe that the main dilemma of 333 is not if it constitutes as “good” or “bad” music, but rather what the definition of music is. BRMC have definitely challenged the notion of mainstream music, caused an uproar (within the BRMC fanbase, anyway), and have gotten us to think about what they are trying to convey as artists, not just musicians. For that I commend them.
BRMC – Sedated With Sterilized Tongues
Tags: album
love this review, it´s respect-ful and pretty much spot on. i wouldn´t have given this album a chance if it came from another band, but i´m glad i did.