Atomic
It should not make sense. NONE OF IT MAKES SENSE.
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Down at The Old Vinyl Emporium™
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Three blind mice meet a marching band, they run into Sergio Leone in a New York disco, he takes them on a subterranean rollercoaster with a punk rock drummer at the helm on a quest to see this otherworldly blonde goddess murmuring expectantly about the on-rushing world’s end.
All this in an ambiguous spacetime flux, flipping madly between major and minor, switching up tempos, and exploring unseen and inhuman dimensions in between.
If this is nuclear holocaust — an atom-age rapture[1] — then I want this sweet apocalyptic disco.
Part I: Three blind mice
What? Why start there? Because it plays a trick. A triumphal ascent, set to a martial, marching cadence to signify their — our — steady progress to our certain evisceration. Did you ever see such a thing in your life? The beat is mechanical, like a machine beyond mortal control, a crazy escalating upbeat, but in case we have not deduced what the nice found out, we are in a minor key? We can’t say we weren’t warned, warned, but things are beyond our reasonable power to change. At the crescendo — are we happy or sad? — a parade ground drumroll — what is coming, and is this it, or a premature end? An adolescent spurt? A jolt, un petit mort — sex is death & death is sex, a little cresting wave, a sure-shot snareshot — stop —
Part II: The Vamp: Spaghetti western guitars & an impatient punk drummer
We open on a wide empty dustbowl, a kerrang of spaghetti western guitars and the rollercoaster clunges down into the abyss. Now the drummer, Burke, sets the pace, pulling frantically at the beat, a brisk four-on-the-floor stomp, hauling the band along at 135 — you know he’d go 150 if they’d only get a leg on — just two measures in and he’s given up on the quarter notes and is impatiently drumming his fingers with sarcastic hi-hat triplets as if to say, NO RUSH GUYS JUST WHEN YOU ARE READY.
They cycle around the intro vamp. Second go-round, those hi-hat triplets are louder, the snare-stomp more strident — thje Drummer, Burke, is like come on, man, we haven’t got all day don’t you know there’s a sweaty cataclysm going down?
But Stein and Infante and their cool-hand Ennio Morricone guitars will not be rushed. Their vibe is dreamy double-tracked twang and you know that this is James Calvin Willsey learned everything he knew, God rest him.
But underneath it all this tension. Fast against slow. Happy in the face of sad. Lively, but morbid. Descending dark depths but somehow aspiring to the heavens. Is there a mounting, rising angelic keyboard swell?
For all the sombre sombrero guitar, that marching four-beat has got a place to be and Burke is taking us there —
PART III: Enter the Golden goddess of the Disco.
Kaboom! There it is! Suddenly we’re exultant: it’s a breezy major, the disco bass leads, and the drummer, Burke, is back in the pocket like he’s saying I told you so. He’s just doing the cha-cha, cheerleading now, for here is the golden goddess.
“Uh-ha, make it all right,” she says. It seems trite, but she’s right — she make it magnificent — and Destri’s keys are pealing church-bell hosannahs like it’s the Eighteen Twelve. Now everything is so major and positive and rising — even your hair is beautiful — and we know something more is coming and blam — some throbbing arpeggiator explodes onto the soundscape and mixed in with the blood and ecstasy we are in the minor again. line and we are thundering down into the depths once more in a beautiful minor - you can't understand joy if you don't know sorrow
Destri’s keyboard is reaching up, augmenting, yearning for something beautiful as if he can see it just above the grate
off on the rollercoaster Tempo and that drum beat
Bass solo A flanging denuded perfect fifth, neither major nor minor, a sequenced beat, and Nigel Robinson
The bass The arps The Ennio Morricone guitar
- ↑ See what I did there?