ZapTown

Melvins
Chicken Switch
Ipecac
Rating: 4 out of 5

The Melvins’ new record, Chicken Switch is an interesting idea. Having released more than 25 albums, they decided to skip the studio and move straight to the post-recording phase of putting out a record, the phase where you send out your upcoming single to various friends and fellow musicians for them to remix.  But Melvin’s have taken that idea and expanded on it.  Rather than send out a single for remix, Melvins sent out an entire album to artists to have a go at creating a single track out of the material.  The result is sometimes wonderful, sometimes frightening,  sometimes …. ehh.  But overall, this thing rocks.

It has moments where it  attains a  level of energy that blisters.  It’s a digital blister as opposed to analog but cool that it embraces its digital path in order to get the payoff.  This might be something that frightens off some fans.  Say the word remix to some and they might have a remixophobic response.  If that’s the case, then they will be missing out on an incredible collaborative effort.  Because while a lot of things could be said about this release, one thing is true,  through collaboration there are dynamics never heard before on a Melvins’ record.

There are some familiar and not-so-familiar but notable names attached to the tracks. Eye Yamatsuka from the Boredoms opens it with “Washmachine Sk8tronics.” Sonic Youth’s Lee Renaldo contributes the sixth track, “EggNog Trilogy.”  And acid rock god and cult figure, Kawabata Makoto turns out a spooky, extraterrestrial, stutter-stop machinery-rock track entitled, “4th Floor Hellcopter.”

A good number of these tracks are royal mind fucks that sound like they might come out of the headphones and eat the furniture while others lie suspended and sound like they are floating in space. “She Chokes Her Dying Breath and Does It In My Face,” contributed by V/VM is of the former.  “Emperor Twaddle Remix,”  by Christoph Heemann is of the latter. And even then it has me scratching my head a little, being four minutes and 21 seconds too long.  For most of that you get absolutely nothing. There are some nice wind chimes and ethereal breathy space patches which are less heard and more felt.  Then, for twenty five or thirty seconds the song rages and surges with a black sound.  Then — nothing.  Back to the breathy, new age patches for 10 or 15 seconds along with some muted voices till the song ends.

I mention that track simply because it’s the low point of the album for me but by no means do I consider it a wasted track. It’s one of those moments where you’re listening to it thinking, “Ahh, I don’t like this one.”  But you don’t skip through it.  Later in the day I found myself thinking about it while I was out doing errands, how random it seemed and how it had a comic quality to the brevity of the breakdown.

The really cool thing about this recording is that the Melvins are recognizable through the remixes.  If you’re a fan of Melvins’ music there are jagged swaths of Melvins’ riffs and rhythms for you to hold on to and orient yourself around as you listen to the album.  They have not just given us a new release but more so an incredibly eclectic compilation. This album behaves more like a various artists sampler where the Melvins’ music is distilled through a wide spectrum of personalities and creative processes.  This is a an album that you could say is the exact opposite of DIY.  They do it with everyone.