Search - Dna :: Last Live at Cbgb

Lying on the Sofa of Life

Mark Bychowski | 09/30/2001

(1 out of 5 stars)

"A band that crucified modern music, dna were destined for great things, but vanished in the early 80's. To really hear this band, get the studio recordings. This live album is unfortunately very poorly done. A casual listen will reveal a very annoying static hiss, this gets paired with jibes, screams, and claps from the audience. Furthermore DNA sound out of their element, as they perform these songs twice as slowly as they should be executed. It's a shame that DNA's only true full-length release was mothballed and then dropped onto the market place in such shabby condition. At least Zorn's label could have re-mastered it.
Another point to raise is that magazines now talk about No Wave and DNA the way they talk about Captain Beefheart. If something is dissonant or unmelodious, it's "No Wave". Well, it's not. That's just fashionable psycho-babble.
No Wave is a term that applies specifically and only to the music of NYC in the period of 1976 to 1982 as performed by jazz-influenced musicians who incorporated modern music techniques such as noise, atonality, mixed media, liberation of sound, and liberation of rhythm into rock.
Most of the bands that are called No Wave- Sonic Youth, DJ Spooky, Blonde Redhead, et al.- are not No Wave because they use elements of pop music that No Wave stood directly opposed to, such as repetition, structure, sometimes tonality. So if you want No Wave music, do not listen to current music. Make your own. The point of No Wave was to say that anybody and everybody can make music and that it shouldn't be determined by arbitrary standards."

Where are they now?

Mark Bychowski | houston tx | 09/09/1998

(4 out of 5 stars)

"easily the best of the no wave groups from new york circa 1979, dna is best on the seldom seen 9-minute "a taste of dna". but this will suffice a great performance from extremely talented non-player arto lindsey, throbbing drummer ikue mori, and beautiful bass ex-pere ubu tim wright. this could have been five star had they been able to tack on the four "no new york" tracks, the "ants" single, & "a taste of dna" (the disc runs about 29 minutes), but take what you can get, sporgs."