Search - Buckethead, Mortensen :: Pandemonium from America

Highlights of heedless slaughter

E. A Solinas | MD USA | 04/04/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Viggo Mortensen does it all -- writing, vibrant poetry, painting, eccentrically moving music, acting, and photography. None of these are done in the "normal" style.



And nowhere is this made more abundantly clear than in "Pandemonium in America," Mortensen's collaboration with avant-rocker Buckethead. It's a wildly unpredictable stretch of experimental music infused with intensely weird instrumentals, intense vocals, and an atmosphere of ominous, bleak power. Expect nothing, because you'll only be wrong.



It opens with the spacey loops, tinkly piano and plucked guitars of "Den Gang Jeg Drog Afsted," which sounds like folk melody played on another planet.



But Mortensen falls back on poetry after that -- the disdainful intonation of "Back to Babylon" ("we'll need all the energy we can muster for compiling this generation's abridged anthology of official war stories, highlights of heedless slaughter..."), and his eerie, powerfully dreamlike channeling of Blake ("Dark is the heaven above/and cold and hard the earth beneath/And as a plague-wind filled with insects cuts off man and beast").



From then on, it's all bizarre beauty -- ghostly distorted ballads, thick droning tribal melodies, murmuring poetry recitals, earthy laments and dances, and a few songs that are just pure musical experimentation, whether it's captured noise and instruments or a thick stretch of spacey post-industrial... whatever. There's even a country song flavoured with Mortensen's distorted vocals.



Yup, I said none of this would be what you'd expect. But that hardly makes it bad.



In fact, "Pandemonium From American" is one of Mortensen's more accessible works, with some catchy moments and alluring experimental work all folded in together. And there's some unifying themes woven into these odd songs, evoking a world with loss of innocence, political corruption, and a truckload of apathy.



While the transitions from one extreme style to another are a little jarring, the music itself is sort of a wild jam session on acid. Buckethead provides excellent, atmospheric guitars, and there's some undercurrents of bass, piano, and drums. Thick slabs of keyboard and powerful Rhodes and organ are woven in here, along with some harmonica, shaker... and, um, wheelchair. Yes, wheelchair.



Mortensen's deep, intense voice slips through the album like a foreboding prophet, murmuring poetry when he's not crooning quietly. His poetry and lyrics are solid stuff, whether the evocative words of Blake, or more arty and thought-provoking ("Pay at the window for reheated prejudiced incantations. Take them home and enjoy with wide-screen, half-digested replayed previews of solemn national celebration...").



And his supporting vocalists Dominic Monaghan and Elijah Wood don't do too badly either -- Monaghan is eerily powerful in "Shadow," while Wood's repetitive lament is haunting ("Never told me, never told me... now you've gone"). But they both have some fun in the last song, where they gibber like chipmunks on acid. Trust me, it's funny.



Music produced by actors, and acting produced by singers -- these are usually too painful to think about. But Mortensen and his collaborators fill "Pandemonium From America" with a powerful, eerie mix of musics and emotions."