ZapTown

Aqui
The First Trip Out
2004 – Ace Fu
Origin: New York City
Style: Noise

There is a degree of poetic justice that comes from the song “Please Send Love.”  It’s a song that defines a post-modern sexual revolution, like art house sterility in a dirty mid-town environment. The bass thrusting, Stephonik X’s gasps and groans accentuated by some brush strokes of guitar noise powered by an echo pedal. Everything about that song screams orgies of rabid sexual desire and a song that imitates the after effect of fingernail imprints on metal.

If teenage sexual rebellion transpired directly from the way it was in the ‘50s and ‘60s with films like Mondo Teeno and Kitten With A Whip, then this song along with Tora Tora Torance! “Hottest Pants” or Sunshine’s “Vampire’s Dance Hall” — both songs explicitly blatant about it’s sexual energy — would be perfect for a 21st century sexploitation soundtrack.

This all sounds wonderful, right? Pair that up with ZZZ’s “Ecstasy” and you have yourself a wild night of hair pulling and teeth biting. However, instead of keeping this level of pleasure, a majority of this album is just noisy art rock fodder wrapped around Stephonik X’s exclamations over even more echo effects. And it gets really annoying when she does that at the beginning of practically every single song, like a kid who cannot sit still and has to walk in circles while blabbering incessant nonsense.

Trying to wrap their minds around the avant garde and blur lines between the noise scene and the New York art rock scene (think Liars and Black Dice), the band ends up not knowing exactly where they exist. And if the first two songs does not immediately turn you off, then you are lucky because that brings us back to the beginning and the diamond in the rough.

But then it reverts to anything pleasurable. It could be Stephonik X’s vocals in the situation of contortioned guitar fuzz feedback, but when it comes to songs like “Action!,” It’s a hard sell when bands like Plot To Blow Up The Eiffel Tower does it so much better.

But before you reach for your coat, there is one last song that reminds us what this band should have been all along. “There As It Bleeds” is an epileptic fit of music if it was behind police tape at a homicide. This is where it should have ended, but they manage to squeak out a few more forgettable tunes before they are done with it all.

Cross-Reference: At The Drive In, The Plot To Blow Up The Eiffel Tower, The Fire Show