I seem to recall not being too enamoured with Pas Musique the first time I heard them. I can’t remember the album or the year, which is probably a fair indication. Then again, I thought The Fall were cack at first, and it took me some time and exposure to come around. The thing with any artist who’s a bit leftfield is that its usual to require a bit of effort on the listener’s part to grasp, let alone get into, it. The mainstream exists to satiate the need for instant gratification by serving up an endless conveyor belt of undemanding sonic slop, musical McDonald’s.
But just as it’s not good for the digestion, it’s not good for the mind or the soul. You n ed food that needs to actually be chewed and metabolised, and the same goes when it comes to music. Listen, digest, process: it’s life enriching. And so here we have ‘Amateur Radio’, which is on many levels, remarkably accessible, yet still requires some cogitation and some time to process. The forms and styles are all familiar, with elements of krautrock and dance providing the basis for this bubbling, throbbing synthfest – but there’s a lot happening all at once, and it des at times feel like it’s close to overload.
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It’s a carnival of synth-styled fireworks, of bleeps and fizzes and rockets and ricochets that takes obvious cues from Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream, but with the insistent beats of primitive drum machines that run through the disorientation collage works of tracks like ‘Elderly Women on Black’, it’s a hybrid and one that take a bit to process. And it’s all the better for it.
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