ROC Rochester

Though Live: ver. 0.0 does not in fact fall under the strict parameters of improvisation, the album nevertheless captures Melt Banana pushing further into the abstract than ever before in its nearly twenty-year career. The new music, a live recording by a three-piece, guitar-less mutation of the band’s usual lineup, also represents the long-overdue payoff for when John Zorn first suggested that the spirit of free jazz could be found, of all places, in the white noise of Napalm Death’s ultra-extreme brand of metal. On Live: ver. 0.0, Melt Banana leaves everything in its back catalog in the dust, reaching a kind of galactic edge of sound that re-defines the term “interstellar space” for the 21st-century – or, more accurately, hurls it (and you, the listener) into a wormhole where at the other side awaits a music so fresh and radiant that it seems to glow in its own strangeness.

It’s no surprise that Melt Banana would yet again be able to harness beauty and form from musical expressions that are most widely known, celebrated – and utilized by other musicians – for their harshness. While the band’s signature sound can certainly be amusing – imagine Minnie Mouse trapped and screeching her head off in the eye of a tornado as it hurtles across a cartoon landscape, while sped-up Ramones riffs collide with wailing sirens, video-game destruction and blast beats – it would be a huge a mistake to dismiss the band as a novelty. At the end of the day, no one can touch Melt Banana’s knack for turning abrasion into art. And, where so many others simply revel in the unlistenability and brain-twisting, almost confrontational difficulty of their own work, Melt Banana proves that music can be severe yet pleasant, even joyful. This time, the severity transports the mind.

Longtime fans have every reason to feel skeptical about the fact that guitarist Agata Ichirou – whose ability to manipulate effects pedals rivals the strikingly expressive range of likeminded individualists like Tom Morello and Adrian Belew  – puts down the guitar here in favor of samples. And also that bassist Rika Hamamoto, whose imposing, groove-laden lines often act as the ballast for the band’s ferocious caterwaul, is notably absent. The truth is that Ichirou’s samples are hard to distinguish from his guitar work, and also that the recurring presence of low-frequency rumble at times actually mimics Hamamoto’s style. Moreover, the term “Lite” fortunately turns out to be completely misleading. (On the band’s current Stateside tour, the “Lite” configuration of the band opens for the standard lineup with Hamamoto. Inexplicably, this itinerary did not include the Bug Jar, the site of several incendiary Melt Banana shows over the last decade. Meanwhile, car trouble, illness, and the threat of freezing rain conspired to prevent the ROC from reporting on the band’s show last Friday at the Mohawk Place in Buffalo.)

As the album opens with a piercing, trademark Ichirou buzz-saw sound effect, new drummer Inomata furiously pounds out a driving beat and it sounds as if Melt Banana might merely be headed down a similar, if slightly stranger, path to the one it’s been on for the last seventeen or so years. But Inomata (who identifies by his first name only) also provides the first clue that the band is about to veer wildly and spectacularly off course when he manages to both cut a rock-solid groove through the noise and add counter-rhythmic folds to the music – all while going into full-on jackhammer mode. This is, of course, no easy task, but Melt Banana has never settled for literalist intepretations of the various musical styles it works with, so it follows that the music demands a drummer who can match extremity with imagination. Inomata delivers, and the cohesion and grace with which he, Ichirou, and charismatic vocalist Yasuko Onuki weave their parts together seems all the more impressive when one considers that this is, after all, a live album (all the more impressive given the startling clarity of the production).

Then, about half-way through, the music suddenly lifts off into another, almost cosmic dimension. On tracks such as the album-closing tandem of “Last target on the Last day” and “Humming Jackalope, waiting for the storm...”, pixelated neon atmospheres melt into a wall of sheer static that sounds like either a rocket ship taking off or the final unplug of all the world’s computer systems. If Live: ver. 0.0 does end up serving as the soundtrack to humanity’s final retreat into the gleaming vistas of its computerized fantasyworld, then at least we know it’s going to sound amazing when we get there. In the meantime, the fact that Melt Banana has taken such a quantum leap forward is an encouraging, near-miraculous sign from a band that was already doing an excellent job of expanding its vision in the first place. (Saby Reyes-Kulkarni)

Related Articles:

• http://thephoenix.com/Boston/Music/93657-Review-Melt-Banana-at-Middle-East-Downstairs/
• http://www.brooklynvegan.com/archives/2009/09/melt_banana_wit.html

Links:

• http://www.a-zap.com
• http://revolverusa.com/search/Melt+Banana
• http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:kifexq9hld6e~T1
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melt_Banana

Melt Banana - A Shield for your eyes...