Hanging 'Lo' and shooting high
Lo-Fidelity Allstars fly the 'Battle Flag' but the rest of the album doesn't take off as well
By IAN YOUNG
Staff Writer
By now, anyone with some
form of access to electricity has heard at least one song from Lo-Fidelity
Allstar's debut album, How to Operate with A Blown Mind.
Unfortunately, "Battle Flag" is the best it gets.
While "Battle Flag" was a
remix of a relatively obscure song by an even more obscure band, that song
(originally by Pigeonhead) is a good indication of what should have been on
How to Operate with A Blown Mind. Synthetic vocals and instruments
fused with electronic samples and beats fuel "Battle Flag" into a danceable
and singable radio hit. While this combination could conceivably produce
textured electronic-rock music, ā la Björk or Nine Inch Nails, the
Lo-Fidelity Allstars don't quite accomplish either the rock or the
electronic part well enough to produce driving and engaging songs. Many of
the tracks on How to Operate with A Blown Mind feature intriguing
guitar riffs and catchy lyrics that are offset by coma-inducing beats and
annoying vocal samples. Other tracks suffer from the opposite: good beats,
bad vocals.
The song "Lazer Sheep Dip
Funk" is a prime example of the good rock/bad beats illness that How to
Operate with a Blown Mind suffers from. The vocal effects for the song,
which use a heavily distorted robotic drawl, are some of the catchiest on
the album. Unfortunately, the annoyingly repetitive cut-and-paste techno
kills any sort of emotion that the vocals generated.
On the opposite side, the
electronic samples and loops on "Blister on My Brain" spawn an energetic,
danceable groove. However, interjecting vocal samples and Dave Randall's
singing, which is more of an unemotional whine, detract heavily from the
catchy vibe of the song, causing "Blisters on My Brain" to be a clumsy mess
of mismatched noises.
Many other tracks suffer
from the same ailment, creating listener frustration. While the musical
talent is present, it's scattered in chunks throughout the album and is not
used effectively. It's too bad the rest of the album doesn't sound like the
track "Kool Roc Bass," a song also released last year that, along with
"Disco Machine Gun," won the Lo-Fidelity Allstars the "Best New Band" award
at NME's Brat Awards. "Kool Roc Bass" is one of the few tracks that manages
to successfully mix Randall's vocals with his band's instrumental talent.
Instead of detracting from the beats and sampled scratching, Randall is
able to feed off the energy provided by the breakneck, catchy rhythms.
The Lo-Fidelity Allstars
also dabble in the spoken-word arena with "I Used to Fall in Love" and the
title track to the album, "How to Operate with A Blown Mind." Once again,
these tracks exhibit a great deal of potential that goes unfulfilled.
Spoken word can be inspiring and thought-provoking, but the distorted
vocals make for incomprehensible lyrics.
How to Operate with A
Blown Mind is a hodgepodge of incomplete vocal segments and creative
electronic sounds intermixed with goofy drivel. The Lo-Fidelity Allstars
have what it takes to produce catchy material that is also rich and
dynamic. But for now, there is always that one remix.
Copyright 1999 by the Daily Trojan. All rights reserved.
This article was published in Vol. 136, No. 12 (Tuesday, February 2, 1999), beginning on page 7 and ending on page 8.