To the outsider, music may seem like a lazy calling: release roughly 60 minutes of music every two years; make the requisite live appearances; then rest on your laurels collecting royalties, tipping martinis and lighting your blunts with flaming Benjamins. Seriously, how much work could it take to piece together an album?
Most electronic artists release only a fraction of what they produce. Just as a painter might draft sheafs of studies and sketches before approaching her canvas, a musician might discard hundreds of samples and dozens of mixes before stamping his seal on a song. And for every track that makes the grade for release, there are often several that never see the light of day. Behind the best songs lie days-- if not weeks-- of sweat, toil and self-censorship. Regrettably, you won't find many of these songs on Mensa Dance Squad.
The calling card of performers like Wesley Willis and the Shaggs is their unrefined, unpracticed, so-bad-it's-brilliant sound. Fair enough. But this gimmick could never translate into the world of IDM, where every glitch is deliberately laid and every beat extensively mapped, where accidents are planned and precision is key. When electronic music comes across as underdeveloped or unduly sloppy, I consider it a fault, not a virtue.
Most of Lesser's one- or two-minute noodlings on Mensa Dance Squad strike me as jejune experiments, rough sketches in an artist's notebook, or unmolded ideas never brought to fruition. The songs-- few of them actually worthy of that description-- seldom rise to the bar set by Lesser's previous efforts or the rest of the Tigerbeat6 catalog.
A few diamonds sparkle up from the rough-- all of them longer pieces that hazard some attempt at structure and take time to elaborate on their themes. "Mensa Dunce Squad (Leg Up Program)," offsets the manic attention span of Lesser's percussive cannonade with soft melodic motifs, whose recurrence brings a sense of cohesion to the song.
Credit for the album's standout actually goes to Kid606, whose nine-minute "Don't Techno for Answer" remix closes the album by rehashing samples from the entire record. The Kid's contribution outdoes Lesser at his own game with a brilliant ADDDM montage that evolves from raga-rooted drill-n-bass into passages of cavernous ambience and cacophonous fury. The tune comes to rest on a tranquil synth refrain, immaculately punctuated by quirky beats and a disembodied but intangibly resonant vocal sample: "Once again, ladies and gentlemen." And then the disc whirs to a stop.
The first five tracks on Mensa Dance Squad range in length from just over a minute to just under three minutes, and juggle sounds from the same basic sample kits. "Mensa Dance Squad," "Ensam Dance Squad," "Nsame Dance Squad," "Samen Dance Squad" and "Amens Dance Squad" were clearly intended as variations on the same theme. Unfortunately, it's difficult to discern any continuity between the tracks, and none of them stand alone as songs. They're really just units of sound-- kernels from which songs might bloom, but never do. And given so little time to evolve, none of these sonic experiments ever pan out. Instead, they build up riffs that never mature, and propose ideas without examining their nuances. "Samen Dance Squad" entices the listener with a menacing, low-register drone and a dizzying mix of time-spaced harmonic oscillations, but abruptly vanishes at the 1:12 mark, segueing into the fifth track.
Gearhound, the album Lesser released on Matador earlier this year, showcased him in better form. On that album, he drew out the individual songs, meditating on structure and conceding sparse melodic flourishes. Nothing he has to offer on Mensa Dance Squad rivals the idiosyncratic, surreal tones of Gearhound's "Obligatory Glitch Worship" or the slow-mounting staccato onslaught of "Hindu Shuffle and Force."
With Mensa Dance Squad, Lesser seems to be thinking out loud, haphazardly attacking the canvas before penciling a single sketch. Meanwhile, we're left with the uncensored results of his efforts: a few tantalizing soundbytes that hardly warrant a $12 purchase.
