Search - Radian :: Juxtaposition

Juxtaposition

Mike Newmark | Tarzana, CA United States | 01/25/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"If one were to group Adam Pierce (of Mice Parade), Scott Herren, and Tortoise all together, throw them into a small dark room and order them to make music, the result would probably sound a lot like Juxtaposition, Radian's second album for Thrill Jockey Records. In keeping with the label's goal of satisfying indie rocksters fed up with the straitjacketed limitations of conventional songwriting, Radian dish out academic, often appealing, occasionally boring, intelligent electronic-based rock. Though it pulls from Tortoise's first two records a bit more than one might care for (sanding away some originality), it's mostly a fine record that plays as a logical extension of such bands that combine rock elements with electronics, and as such, it will appeal mostly to current fans the genre who want to hear more.



Radian play on the outer fringes of the already left-of-center post-rock heading. While atypical song structure finds a comfortable home and singing is verboten, Radian have scrapped the lo-fi aesthetic and re-written the rulebook in reverse: grimy instrumentation filtered through squeaky clean production. That, and the continual domination of electronics over acoustic instruments, actually brings them closer in spirit to Aphex Twin than Ativin. The playing is precise, the sounds slightly warped, the moods dark and ominous. Electronic granules congeal--hiding or changing the nature of the organic instrumentation that (seldom) appears--funneled through crisp production, evoking images of well-oiled war-era machinery or the dentist's office from your worst nightmare. In fact, Radian pull off the not-insignificant feat of incorporating some shade and shadow into the clinical chill surrounding every inch of the world they painstakingly sculpt over the course of the album.



That doesn't mean that the whole album is particularly distinctive or even accomplished, because it's not. It does, however, ride on the success of its three most distinctive tracks. "Rapid Eye Movement" is a menacing take on dub, moving a crunching baritone siren into the spotlight in the first few seconds and then returning after a considerable amount of suspense has been built up. "Ontario" is a tightly-wound collage of seemingly random noise--melodic rumbles and wheezes maintaining startling harmony and recalling labelmate Oval's later body of cacaphonic work. "Nord," Juxtaposition's lengthy swan song, is perhaps the album's only moment of conventional beauty, with little more than vibraphones, a few electronic zings, and a desolate repeated figure that moves closer and closer to us before fading into static. It's an appropriate close for an album that keeps its distance as much as it does, with no light and little musical gesture.



That Juxtaposition doesn't immediately engage bogs down lesser songs like Transistor and Tiefenscharfe; the former's rote go-nowhereness and the latter's random electronic warblings and puzzling ambience stick to the post-rock textbook so closely that they only rehash the ideas of their betters and serve to solidify the genre's potential for pointlessness. "Academic" music almost always suffers from being too academic, too self-conscious and unwilling to let loose, and even as Radian choose the medium of a recent (early 90's) development of experimental music, the idea has been played so many times that any approach failing to change or add to its foundations is likely to fall short.



Radian's purpose, however, doesn't seem to be to engage, but rather to stand on its own as a viable world of color-drained electronics, to paint a satisfying portrait, and to provoke thought upon the listener. They've done just that, and 75% of the time it works. Juxtaposition is a dark, almost cinematic experience of epic but strangely understated proportions, representative of a world we can see in front of us but can never be fully inside. That's either a triumph or a fault, depending on what the listener wants out of music of this kind, but certainly Radian knows that post-rock has almost limitless possibilities, and inasmuch as the genre can still sound relatively fresh and accommodate for new approaches (no matter how slight the curve), Radian adequately hold up their end even this late in the post-rock game. Just don't expect a revolution."

Michael Bolton was never this BAD

cubik dervish | burque, usa | 12/27/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Surely, if you like Michael Bolton you have no business listening to Radian. You probably would need a lot of work on the MUSICAL TASTE department to keep you busy for a lifetime, if you could ever get out of it. On the other hand, if you dig adventures in music, this may do it for ya.



This is an excellent CD, however compromised the "pure glitch" ideals they may be.

It is accessible because it blends rock and glitch and so most people can at least initially grab on to something. However, after a few listening sessions, one may discover that some of the best tracks are not the "rocking" ones, but other, less beat driven tunes.



The music could be Tortoise influenced, but that would be saying that U2's Joshua Tree, say, sound like your average Daniel Lanois album. Definetely NOT a connection musically, besides this record being produced by Tortoise's John McEntire. Radian pretty much sound like themselves. Period. The only Tortoise tune that sound anything like this and, very remotely, is "Eros" off Standards. 'Nuff said.



The trend to make glitch more accesible is not necessarily good or bad, but these guys do it with such aplomb that the results are worth lisening to. The drummer is excellent, and his beats give this album a definite "mechanic-yet-human" sound that could have never been achieved with a computer. The bass is hyper-minimal, yet it holds the tunes down as it should. The samples and re-samples are good and not very generic, yet sometimes shrill and thin, very "digital noise" sounding



Overall, this is a great album for those of us hoping the Michael Boltons of the world would just simply dissappear into thin air. Definitely no adult contemporary, bland, sappy junk here."