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a review by simon hopkins of
release format Forward Back by Crib (CD Album)

text

Something's going on on the US West Coast. For possibly the first time since the late 70s, California seems to have become a locus for all kinds of interesting and boundary-busting music-making. Off the top of my head, you've got the Bay Area lunatic-metal fringe: Mr Bungle, Fantômas, Melvins, Slayer... Also in SF, there's the whole turntablism/metal crossover with DJ Disk and The Invisibl Skratch Piklz laying down grooves for the likes of Buckethead, Primus and sundry Laswellian projects. Further south, Tom Recchion and assorted fellow Los Angeles Free Music Society continue to explore the exotica-avant garde hinterland.

One figure who seems to be key to at least part of the Californian music underground is bassist, composer and label owner Devin Sarno. Sarno runs the excellent Win Records; originally home for the work of Sarno's first group, Waldo the Dog-Faced Boy, Win has become a refuge for a whole host of cross-fertilising projects (and, it should be said, a fund of great band names, among them Aloha Wednesday, The Hansel and Gretel Disease Forest, Polar Goldie Cats, Speculum Fight - my favourite - and The Uphill Gardeners).

Crib is Sarno's own solo project; solo bass, that is. Well, kinda. Sarno's evident obsession with subsonics has led him to filter his bass tones through pitch shifters, delays and EQs to produce a low end I suspect is inaudible on 75% of home stereos. Some years ago bumped into music commentator-theoretician Kodwo Eshun in the street. Kodwo was walking along wearing just about the largest headphones I've ever seen. I quizzed him about them and his reply was definitive: 'Simon, bass is an immersive environment.' I'm reminded of that observation now, listening to Crib, as Sarno builds an entire sound world from what is, for most music, only its foundation. Much of the coverage the Crib project has received thus far has been of the 'sound of hell/chainsaw murders/apocalypse' variety, which seems pretty cloth-eared to me. In fact, this is a rich and genuinely beautiful music. If, on one hand, the sound of Crib is one of foreboding, its resonance, on the other, is deeply seductive. Posted by simon hopkins at 00:00, 26 Apr 2000