doncbruital (FMA Admin)

“Sweep on, you fat and greasy citizens! 'Tis just the fashion.” – Shakespeare, As You Like It

"The radio's on / The herd moves along / Why is the music so bad?" – Culturcide, "Love is a Cattle-Prod"

How, in today’s grimily technophiliac society of, you know, lowest-common-denominator cultural fare and information overload and nasty tabloids and all the rest, is one to get hold of some decent rebellion? It’s among the world’s oldest questions (albeit adjusted for each successively worse epoch) which has thus prompted plenty in the way of answering-attempts offered throughout the course of popular history, by many of our greatest minds. But come on, allow me. Yeah, there’re those who’d preach total divestment from the evils of technology and popular culture as the only workable solution (guaranteeing and safeguarding, for we holdouts, the staidly unshakable nagvoice in the back of our head saying that, um, they’re right), but after all, here you are on a website, and for Pete’s sake, you like cool music, it being your God-given right to enjoy some. How then? How to do so without becoming another cog, or surrendering yer rebel flag, or tacitly supporting the twice-homogenized-over spoilteries that pass, these days, for popular tunes? How to ward off, apotrope-style, the evil eyes and tin ears of the greasy listenership-at-large? Well, mock ‘em.

History is rich with purveyors of such bravely iconoclastic acts. Nicochares had, in the 4^th century BC, his lost Diliad, a parody of the Iliad that I’m sure rocked, as its referent is soap opera cut-and-dry and full of characters ripe for the goofing on. A few years later, Sterne wrote Tristram Shandy, Culturcide released Tacky Souvenirs of Pre-Revolutionary America, and Weird Al was knocking it out of the park on a regular basis. Thus was true beauty artfully derived, in whole or in part, from the skillful undermining of traditional forms, theretofore-unchallenged missteps, and divers cultural detrita. Impish rebellion thrived, pesky and indefatigable from the mainstream’s unlit corners.

This complete historical round-up brings us smoothly and with unquestionably sound logic to the present day and ECHOES STILL SINGING LIMBS, the Montreal four-piece whose FMA page heads me off at the pass by declaring “All reviews are false,” a refusal reinforced by a relative dearth of information about them on the web (save for that myspace and the odd live writeup). They don’t explicitly parody existing hits, as to do so would be, by now, quite tiresome (on account Nicochares wrote that ticket some time ago). What they do do is translate their members’ impossibly virtuosic technical skills and patent multifariousness of instrumental specialties (harmonium, cello, operatic vocals, African and Middle Eastern fingerpicking) into an odd patchwork organism whose very existence constitutes a thumb-nosed rebuke to your stodgy bog-standard folk forms--parody by way of constant, relentless subversion. Long-form dronage is usurped by florid ornamentation. Gritty caterwauls interweave with bold coloratura. Sharp clamor hangs in the same air with gossamer patterns of melodic subtlety. The spirit of musical rebellion is, in these carefully plotted shocks of chaos, plainly observable. It's that good old mocking Diliad, if the dils in question are those who'd see musical traditions strictly codified and made mutually exclusive.

Echoes Still Singing Limbs has offered up for your complimentary perusal two such boundary-leaping tracks from their forthcoming full-length, and if you've got the requisite subversiveness of temperament to hang with such wild and woolly creatures, you're invited to watch their FMA-space for more info in the near future.