While researching Add N to (X) (the band, not the computer command that creates an unknown third electronic forces, from which the band drew its name) in preparation to write this review, I came across a curious quote on the Mute Records page for the band. Simon Williams of England's NME music journal, described a January 30,1999 live performance of the band thusly: "The sound and vision of Space 1999 gone mad, they manufacture an extremely passable version of an Iraqi torture tactic by dint of their hellbound frequencies and buttock-trembling vibes. 'Jesus!' winces a man by the bar. 'This could make my bottom explode.'" What made the quote curious to me, what got my cerebral hamster running full bore on his rusty little wheel, was my blind acceptance of the quote, despite its use of loaded language like "hellbound," "buttock-trembling" and "Iraqi torture attack," as enthusiastically positive. In any other context, an exploding bottom would be a bad thing, a very, very bad thing. They have medicine for that sort of stuff. But here's a man hefting a pint and exclaiming with glee, albeit wincing glee, that Add N to (X) is essentially the sonic equivalent of an undercooked Quarter-Pounder from Mickey D's, in terms of bowel displacement. And the critic's OK with that. More than OK. Exploding buttocks? Cheerio! Blimey.
How did our critical vernacular get here? At what point on the lexicograpical timeline did we develop praises built, ironically, upon phrases with undeniably negative connotations? How many times in the last year have you read a critic's endorsement of a particular album or performance that did not include phrases like "sonic assault" "brutal" "with military precision" or even "shocking?"
I think maybe 'round about 1974, or '75, when Throbbing Gristle burst on to the music scene and punk rock really began to take off, music criticism began to invert invectives into endorsements. This is all just a theory mind you - I'm not a semiotician or a linguist or a sociologist or a musicologist, I don't know the principles of prescriptive grammar from a hole in my torso, and I haven't even bothered to look at magazine reviews from the 70's to determine whether or not I'm correct. But it just seems plausible to me, that in the 1950's and '60's, kids tried to describe rock n' roll with naively glowing praises of danceability and what not, as TV tried to capitalize on a youth market while making it stomachable to sponsors and parents. By the '70's, after Vietnam and the hippy revolution and the beats and punk rock and disco, young people had become pretty sick of having their culture cannibalized and regurgitated back on to them by the very people whose control they wanted to escape, or at least reconfigure. The only way to keep an artistic expression vital in an age during which every living thing found itself marketed and consumed, would be to make it unmarketable, and that meant subsuming negative criticism and turning it on its weary, wrinkled little head. The language of outrage, directed at such seminal artsist as Throbbing Gristle, William S. Burroughs and the whole pantheon of early punk rock, became codified to signify "cool" and "viable means of rebellion" to several generations of progressively minded and sick-up-to-here artists and audiences alike.
That said, Add N to (X) and their buttock assaulting Iraqi torture attack are one of the most ass-kicking electronic ensembles to roar down the pike in a long while. They use relatively ancient equipment (Moogs) and almost nostalgic beats (Go-Go) to generate tunes like you haven't heard since Devo came to your town and burned it to cinders. Their use of semi-harmonic, reverberating vocals recall Can in their most lucid moments, their affection for sinus-cavity-collapsing keyboard tones conjure up the twin ghosts of Alan Vega and Suicide. On voracious, danceable tracks like "Robot New York," "Skills" and "Fyuz," they club you like a baby seal, slash the $400 Pirelli tires on your Honda sport coup, and then take off down the street after the ice cream man, an insatiable bloodlust chiseled on their haggard young faces. When the "Mommy, Mommy Daddy, Daddy, Mom-my" chorus of "Steve's Going to Teach Himself Who's Boss" erupts amidst Kraftwerkian bursts of analogue blips and bloops, you won't quite be sure whether they're calling out for their parents or naming their next targets. These guys excel at making lounge soundtracks so efficiently threatening that I listen to the album compulsively, and then sometimes wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat and pray, pray that they're not waiting for me in the shadows of my bedroom. I can't wait to see them live.
Sean Flinn | May, 1999
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