Eardrum's primary partnership of Lou Cicotelli and Richard Baker have been providing jazzbo hipsters with high concept drum-circle tracks since 1996. Cicotelli has also given up some lo-end theory for post-modern primitives Pram and Laika, but those acts never gave him the freedom to realize his Afro-beat-on-Saturn rhythmic abstractions.
Performing live and then editing the tracks in a Teo Macero-like manner, Eardrum hope to preserve the spontaneity of live performance, and to shape their jams into something far greater than the sum of its individual parts. But despite their noble intentions, Eardrum only partially succeed. Side Effects is an enormous canvas upon which Eardrum and a legion of guest percussionists have painted fragments of rhythm. The risk that Eardrum run is that the album could be too thickly layered to make any headway through. And indeed, the band's gamble never fully pays off.
Side Effects is not mere smog; it's hardening concrete. A shame, because Cicotelli and Baker and their guests-- Jason Yarde (of J Life, Yoruba Jazz People and Manu Dibango), Folasade Barbarinde (of Adzido Pan African Dance and Drum Ensemble), Gary Jeff (of Mass, God, and Scalpel), Nii Tagoe (of Adzido, Frititi, and African Head Charge), Nana Tsiboe (of Dade Krama, Moire Drum Orchestra, and Trouble Dat) and Laika's Guy Fixsen-- are really quite competent as musicians. It's just that the music is impenetrable.
Perhaps my concern about Side Effects is due to my limited exposure to avant-garde percussion albums. Sure, I've enjoyed Evelyn Glennie's conservatoire-junglist album Shadow Behind the Iron Sun and done a lifetime's worth of Watusis to Toby Dammit's Top Dollar. But Eardrum's Miles-on-Mars remix of Sofa Surfers' "Guns 'n' Bombs 'n' Knives" still bugs me out whenever I hear it. So I concede that I may be at fault. Nonetheless, let me outline my misgivings.
The biggest problem I see with Side Effects is that the individual tracks have little for me to latch onto, with the exception of a few select tracks. "Sandblasted," with its sax squalls and insistent bass rhythms, sounds as though Eardrum have captured the Master Musicians of Jajouka and promised their release, provided the guys make a monstrous enough racket. "Two Strangers," accompanied by Imade Iyamu's chants, allows Guy Fixsen's Moog to squiggle and farp. "Trickster Tale" sends Sun Ra's Arkestra on an echoed-out journey beyond the orbit of Neptune. The relentless bass boom and cowbell-ish tones of "Bone Room" could serve as the basis for a mega-ton Techno Animal doom rap track. The gloriously sullied "Escape from Evil" traps Chic's wikky-wikky guitar sound and uses it as a birch to whip the devoid-of-funk.
However, too many tracks-- such as "Family Mask," the album opener-- remain impenetrable, as their percussive resilience balks at comprehension. I've even tried to listen to "Family Mask" as wallpaper, but to little success. I really want to engage with the apocalyptic voodoo madness within, but maybe I'm just not skilled or pure enough to be granted entry. I doubt very much that Eardrum are expecting huge sales for Side Effects. Although some occasionally eclectic DJs might want a copy as an exotic tool to break up their sets with, Side Effects' uncompromising murkiness is likely to prevent all but the most devoted from enjoying it.
