ENEMY FROM SPACE

The Condition of Music

Smiley Jones Records (2003)

review by Bill Binkelman

Kelly Shane is Enemy From Space and, according to an Internet quote, he once described his music as "lo-fi sci-fi electronic music." This is his second album as Enemy From Space and, I gotta say, once I fully explored it (and it took a few playings to do so) I suddenly "got it" and I got it good! This is delightfully quirky, downright subversive, retro-futuristic synthesizer music, an off-the-wall hybrid of early '60s analog sounds, synthesizer "cool" weirdness and tonalities and current-day engineering and beats. Putting it bluntly, this is flat out a helluva lot of fun. If, like me, you grew up in the '60s and '70s listening to recordings from Tonto's Expanding Headband, Synergy, Beaver and Krause, Fifty Foot Hose, (and to a lesser degree, artists like Tomita, Patrick Gleeson, Wendy Carlos) and other earlier pioneers of synthesizer music, you will probably turn cartwheels in your brain when you hear this CD.

Describing this, on the other hand, is gonna be damn near impossible. "Valley of the Saroors" opens with a whole lot of whooshing and swooshing before sparkling treated piano and alien bird sounds take over along with plucked strings. "Achilles and the Tortoise" has this funky march-like cadence with lower register synths and starts layering an assortment of analog keyboards all pounding out the same cheesily doom-filled anthem straight out of an old SF film. "The Acropolis of Desire" throws some contemporary glitch beats in amongst the retro synths that sparkle and shimmer in dramatic analog glory. "A Most Unusual Gift of Love" opens with soaring "traditional" synths in a spacemusic vein before veering into left field surrounded by computer-gone-nuts sound effects and stuttering scratching rhythmic noises along with a wonderfully quirky melodic tune played out on harpsichord-like synths. "The Outer Worlds" is close to a straightforward outer space-type slice of EM, with lots of washes of whooshes of synths, bell-tones, and wind-like textures. Sprinkled in here and there are some tom-tom drums that add a slight tribal element to the cosmic sounds. "Crafty" mines the same retro territory that the artist Eien is doing on his work, with synth notes (not chords or washes) and bouncy beats, both very retro, in a light-hearted and playful fashion.

Then there is the totally unclassifiable title track, a twenty-one minute journey through perhaps fifty different musical themes. Yes, that's right, I wrote "fifty," and it could be a lot more. Some of the themes last only twenty seconds, others might last for a minute. I wasn't about to count them all! Obviously, something this idiosyncratic, disorienting and bizarre is an acquired taste and has to be approached with a sense of humor and an open mind. However, it has become perhaps my favorite song on the album. I just wouldn't recommend listening to it while high or tripping. Not because it's scary or disturbing; in fact some snatches of melody are outright loopy in the best possible sense and will make you laugh or at least grin. However, the transitions are so rapid and abrupt sometimes that your state of mind may influence how well-received it all is. Out of tune carnival pipe organ followed by fat analog keys and spacy synths, followed by dramatic Synergy-like neo-classical orchestrations, followed by subterranean rumblings, followed by discordant computer bloops and bleeps, followed by Carlos Tron-ish melodies…well, are you getting the idea? And it just goes on and on and on. Yet, the more I listened to it, the more I loved it. I know, I'm weird.

The Condition of Music may not be the easiest to describe album I've ever had to review and it may have been the most confusing to figure out (because I didn't appreciate the subversive humor that Shane is putting forth). Once I did crawl inside this outrageous and fun-filled (and also well-engineered and produced) album, I didn't want to leave. CDs like this one remind me that electronic music can be as much fun as any other genre, if not more so. Highly recommended to those who need a smile put back on their face.