Angular instrumental indie rock. It's an institution. Unfortunately for Turing Machine, it's an institution that's already been founded and largely drained of its grant money. Countless bands have approached its information desk, filled out their forms, collected their funding, recorded timeless albums, and faded back into obscurity. Sure, the genre spawned its share of legends, but these days, it takes more than just repeating unusual melodic and rhythmic patterns to warrant peoples' interest.
That said, the main problem Turing Machine faces is that they aren't fronted by a lyricist. The music is fine on its own, recalling bands like Unwound, Shellac, and these guys' former full-time outfit, Pitchblende. But without a vocal melody to hold things together, this is just another faceless indie band rehashing what Trans Am and Don Caballero have already accomplished.
Still, the New York-based trio have made the most of their craft and their execution is almost flawless. These seven tracks are no less listenable than anything issued by Turing Machine's predecessors. Distorted guitars ring through A New Machine for Living like windchimes in a tropical hurricane, the drumset is mercilessly punished for refusing to follow orders, and time signatures go through more changes than David Bowie's sexual preference in a London nightclub.
Other things Turing Machine have going for them are their tightness, their raw vigor, and their technical prowess. If nothing else, this album is a great example of what can be achieved on a technical level when a band truly puts their heart into the music. The best part is, this band is rumored to be as proficient live as they are on record, if not more so. Sadly, that doesn't make their album any more interesting. (Though, I probably will check them out when they come through town.)
It's not as much the kind of music these guys play as when they're playing it. In the critical indie rock climate of 2000, this style of music has not only been done before, its time has also practically passed. The 1990s saw plenty of this type of stuff going on, specifically from labels like Touch and Go and Thrill Jockey, but if people wanted to hear the same type of thing done over and over again, they would have cloned Menudo years ago. We're in a new decade now, and just as disco withered at the end of the 70s, the time has come to lay pretentious instrumental indie rock to rest.
Nope, it didn't take long to mine and hollow this limited genre. Any original sound that could be drawn out of guitars, bass and drums has long since been extracted. Yeah, there are probably a few things that haven't been tried out yet, but I can't think of what they might be. And apparently, neither could Turing Machine, a band whose ferocious sound will either mark the last time anyone attempted this kind of aggressive background music, or be forgotten among stacks and stacks of similarly artsy noise-rock LPs.
It's conceivable that Turing Machine could offer an infinitely more creative follow-up sometime next year. After all, this is only their debut album. But if A New Machine for Living is any indicator of things to come, this band's tragic downfall will have been that they simply didn't introduce enough of their own vision into the mix to make their music relevant.
