The Optical Files #82: Japan - Quiet Life (1979)

I recognize that most people reading this have never heard of this record or band, but Quiet Life is one of my favorite albums of all time. I'll have difficulty articulating exactly why, but I think I can start with its tonal integrity. Everything about the album contributes to a vaguely sinister, nocturnal atmosphere. The clean, white background of the album cover is evoked in the futuristic coldness of the synths that drive every song. David Sylvian's baritone vocals are somehow sexy, tortured & sneering at the same time, seducing you into his world while disdaining you for wanting to come--Bowie in Labyrinth vibes. There's even a song called "Halloween"! This all combines to create my nominee for spookiest album ever that's not really trying to be spooky.

It's also the most cyberpunk album ever that's not trying to be cyberpunk, & with good reason: the term hadn't been codified yet. It was just a style & philosophy that naturally evolved in any kind of forward-thinking art being made in the late '70s/early '80s. I discovered this album in high school around the time I was diving deep into cyberpunk, & the interests dovetailed perfectly. Of course there are the synths themselves: flashy futuristic textures that conceal an underlying grimness. Of course there's the fusion of human & machine implied by the combination of natural & synthetic sounds. Of course, The Velvet Underground was a major influence on the cyberpunk movement, with William Gibson even titling a novel after "All Tomorrow's Parties," the Velvets song that Japan cover here. (We'll ignore that the cover is probably my least favorite song on the record.) Specifically, the layered keys, pads & choirs in "Despair" reminded me of some of the music from the video game Deus Ex. There are other cyberpunk elements too, like the Cold War anxieties in the lyrics of "Halloween," "Despair"'s references to "the artists of tomorrow" who live "in pleasant despair," the curious Orientalism present in "A Foreign Place," "Life in Tokyo," & the band name itself--not to mention more subtly in the compositions, like the pentatonic guitar & piano figures of "The Other Side of Life."

Speaking of film comparisons, every song here is palpably cinematic & conjures rich visuals for me. Close your eyes when "Despair" is playing & the muted drum machine, funereal piano & saxophone flourishes will show you a scene of someone driving at night through a rainy city, unsure of where they're going except that it's better than going home. The well-orchestrated strings of "In Vogue" have a similar effect. I've listened to this album in all weather conditions & I can verify that it's perfect for rain, perfect for snow, perfect for fog, & best after dark.

Musically, the album's star is bassist Mick Karn, whose instrument is mixed right up front & who is always doing something interesting, from the funky slaps of the title track to the atonal stabs of "Fall in Love With Me" to the hollow, spacey loops of "All Tomorrow's Parties." I've always suspected that John Taylor's flashy funk bass playing in Duran Duran is directly inspired by Karn's work--he's just as amazing in Japan's previous album Obscure Alternatives & even more quirky in the followup Gentlemen Prefer Polaroids. I like those records, but there's something about Quiet Life that just hits that sweet spot for me. This album lives rent-free in some darkly glamorous corner of my disreputable brain, plugged in & glowing & waiting for night to fall.

The Optical Files #36: White Zombie - La Sexorcisto: Devil Music Volume One (1992)

Back in 1990, White Zombie must have seemed like an odd choice for major-label attention. Their 2 LPs & 3 EPs worth of material were ragged, noisy, fuzzed-out Frankenstein headtrips with lurching tempos & shrieking vocals that almost dared you to like them. But once they caught the attention of Geffen (probably the most important label in '90s mainstream rock), they turned around & delivered 2 albums of streamlined, radio-ready groove metal, starting with 1992's La Sexorcisto. Along the way, Rob Zombie managed to reignite the flame of Monster Kid culture, like a stoned dreadlocked Forrest J. Ackerman for the 1990s.

A major reason for the slick sound of La Sexorcisto is budget: suddenly the band had real money to make a record, & the production is about as polished as heavy music gets. Occasionally this works to its detriment, as some of the riffs on songs like "I Am Legend" & "Spiderbaby" are sludgy enough to make me wish for a little more mud behind the board. Another result of the major-label budget is the abundance of samples, which would become a Zombie trademark. There were some samples peppered here & there on the band's previous records, but La Sexorcisto has them on practically every track, not to mention the 2 interstitial "Knuckle-Duster" sample collages. They are the first (& so far only) indication of the industrial direction that Rob would take the band through the next album & his solo career. As for this album, keyboards are mostly absent, & the only danceable beats are the ones Ivan DePrume is making behind the kit.

Maybe the most significant reason for the band's riffier sound is the entrance of guitarist Jay Yuenger, who churns out a reliably muscular performance through a fistful of sinister riffs that convey the overall impression of spooky fun. A handful of the riffs (e.g. the verse riffs on "Soul-Crusher" & "Cosmic Monsters Inc.") resemble slowed-down thrash riffs, but overall the album escapes the derisive "half-thrash" label a lot of groove metal got tagged with during this era. Most of the riffs owe more to '60s psychedelia, with a smattering of Melvins influence in the sludgier moments, remnants of the band's earlier styles. The groove metal movement's de-emphasis of guitar solos holds true here, though, as there are lots of instrumental breaks where your ear expects a solo, but none is forthcoming. Sometimes Yuenger throws in some slidey, woozy leads instead, but more often the band just rides the groove, with maybe a spoken movie sample interlude. Not until "Soul-Crusher," the 4th song, do we get our first guitar solo, more bluesy & tone-focused than technical. A similar solo follows in "I Am Legend" 3 songs later, & an unimpressive wispy one in the late-album letdown "Grindhouse A Go-Go." For the most part, the guitars on La Sexorcisto aren't multi-tracked, so perhaps the band was worried about sounding thin. Maybe they wanted to put more emphasis on atmosphere & groove than guitar theatrics. Or maybe Yuenger just didn't like solos. Whatever the case, to my ears the band could have benefited from adding a lead guitarist & letting Yuenger focus on the twisted, smoking heap of riffage.

Sean Yseult on bass gets a little more tricky than your standard groove metal bassist. Every so often she breaks away from unison with the root guitar notes & does her own thing, like in the chorus of "Thunderkiss '65" & the intro to "Black Sunshine." In a metal band with only 1 guitarist, especially one who is fond of throwing in atonal Voivod-esque chord stabs (again, "Black Sunshine"), the bassist is often responsible for instrumental harmonies, & the album's most interesting musical moments are the ones where Yseult & Yuenger are playing against one another. She has freedom to do this thanks to DePrume's rock-solid, no-frills, so-showy-fills drumming: he never gets a solo, he never draws attention to himself. His snare tone is a little over-reverbed for my liking, but at least it isn't pingy.

Rob Zombie adjusted his vocal delivery from the earlier album's nasal shrieks to more of a midrange bellow. He hadn't quite landed on the bark he'd employ on his solo albums, but there was a lot of emphasis on rhythmic precision--some people compare it to rapping & see this as a precursor to the Korn sound, but I liken it more to Tom Araya's Hell Awaits delivery. But as always, the vocals are Rob's least important contributions to this album. His lyrics, artwork, style, sample choices & overall artistic direction are unmistakably vital, & were the big selling point for me & a lot of other horror-obsessed kids in the '90s. It's thanks to him that this whole album smells like 30 year-old bongwater. With lyrical topics & dialogue samples ranging from Night of the Living Dead to Richard Matheson to Spider-Baby to Russ Meyer to Urotsukidoji, Rob turned as many kids on to high-class trash as the aforementioned Forry Ackerman. Say what you will about him, I can't think of anybody who has done more to thrust lowbrow horror culture into the mainstream, & I can't not love him for that.

Still, this isn't a perfect album. It's too long, & tracks toward the end like "Grindhouse A Go-Go" feel a little samey in terms of riffs & vocal delivery, & then there's the aforementioned soloing weak spot. But on Halloween or Mischief Night when you turn on the blacklight, turn up the volume & start looking for trouble, it's not like that really fucking matters. 

The Optical Files #29: Rob Zombie - Educated Horses (2006)

Educated Horses marks the turning point when Rob Zombie became more filmmaker than rocker, i.e. when he started making albums in between his movie projects rather than vice versa. Educated Horses is also the last Rob Zombie album I bought (unless you count Zombie Live, released the following year). In my memory it goes down as the lukewarm CD that killed my interest in Rob Zombie the rocker, even as my interest in Rob Zombie the filmmaker was mounting. For that reason, I haven't given the album a fair front-to-back chance in many years, so I did my best to sit down for this listen with an open mind.

The cover art here is certainly new territory for the artist. Gone are the ghoulish makeup, occult sigils, & psychedelic colors of the White Zombie era & his first 2 solo records; in their place we have...a black & white photo of regular-guy-Rob in a denim jacket, standing in the woods, looking up & slightly to the left. It seems to signal a shift toward maturity. Does the music bear this out? Well, I wouldn't say mature exactly, but it does lessen the industrial excesses of his previous 2. The samples & keyboards are still there, but there's no turntablism & the mood is tasteful rather than garish. On the whole, Educated Horses is a muscular rock record, like a less riffy version of the early White Zombie sound. He's going for more arena rock, less metal this time around, as songs like the heavily Gary Glitter-influenced "The Scorpion Sleeps" make obvious.

The other stylistic throughline for this album is something I hinted at earlier: Rob was a filmmaker now, & although his music always had a cinematic edge, Educated Horses sounds less like a standalone rock album & more like a soundtrack to a horror movie that doesn't exist. His trademark ambient interludes (the album intro "Sawdust in the Blood" & "100 Ways") sound more like film score than DJ breaks, & the huge orchestral strings in "Death of It All" recall Tyler Bates's soundtrack work for Zombie's films.

One thing I appreciate about Rob is that he always made short albums (in his solo career anyway--White Zombie is another matter). Educated Horses does its thing in 38 minutes, in an era when 70-plus-minute CDs were the norm. Even if you're not enjoying the album, it's over before you know it. My favorite song, then & now, is "17 Year Locust," a massive Sabbathesque stomper. The main riff isn't very interesting (in fact, it's probably the 50th time you've heard it), but the energy & atmosphere is amazing. The massive production on the drums is a mule-kick to the chest when the full band comes in, & the wah-wah keys that drive the verse sound like Stevie Wonder's signature clavinet. By the time the sitar (!) & nylon acoustic finish trading solos, you're already reaching for the repeat button.

"Let it All Bleed Out" is an interesting, not always successful blend of the aforementioned styles: a thrashy (but not quite thrash) main riff & a slower, Soundgarden-esque alt-rock bridge. Rob sings in the same old cadence as seemingly half the songs on Hellbilly Deluxe, plus he seems to be aping Jim Morrison on the chorus. The moody acoustic-driven "Death of It All" is buoyed by the aforementioned string arrangement, & "Ride" has a nu-metalish main riff, despite Rob usually avoiding the Korn sound even though the press & public lumped them together. It's understandable why Rob didn't use the song "The Devil's Rejects" in his film of the same name--it sounds too close in style to "House of 1000 Corpses" from The Sinister Urge, despite the 2 films being about as different stylistically as you can get.

"Devil's Rejects" is one of 2 songs on the album that tie in to Rob's movies. (3, if you count "Foxy Foxy," which seems to reference a character from 3 From Hell, a film Rob wouldn't make for another 13 years.) The other is the album closer, "Lords of Salem," a big doomy lurcher with a thundering chorus, recorded from a live performance. After the song, the band transitions into another number before the recording fades out. It's a fun, ragged, punkish way to close the record.

Is Educated Horses the disaster I remember? Definitely not. I can confidently say I like more than half of the album, & a few songs transcended the record to become all-time favorites. But it's the first record Rob had a hand in that was anything less than a front-to-back banger in my opinion, so in hindsight I understand why I perceived it as a letdown.