Snog
Beyond the Valley of the Proles
One of the undoubted highlights
of Snog’s career was when they turned away from standard electro stylings and
brought an acoustic, country and western influence into their sound on Buy
Me…I’ll Change Your Life. This was
somewhat lacking from their last effort, Third Mall From the Sun (also released
on Hymen) that displayed a pleasant, but ultimately homogenous sound. Now, with Beyond the Valley of the Proles,
we have a true return to form with the balladry and jangling guitars taken to
their logical limits. However, it would
be unlike Snog to leave well enough alone and to this acoustic mix they have
added a liberal dose of IDM electronics (courtesy of label-mate and fellow
antipodean, End). The result is a
bizarre fusion of acoustic and electric, past and present, mainstream and
underground sensibilities, producing what, for me, must be one of the albums of
the year.
The thematic content of the
songs is very typically Thrussellian: anti-corporate, mock-apocalyptic
consumerist wit and observation (also reflected in the wonderful cover art by
Chris Woods, who was also responsible for Third Mall… and Relax Into the
Abyss.) This produces some
wonderful lyrical gems, such as “Welcome to Adelaide”’s scathing account of the
city’s justice system, “They’ve got judges too / They’d like to butt fuck you /
But only if you’re under nine” or the anti-establishment lilt of “Justified
Homicide”, “Now I wouldn’t want to advocate / Violence or bloodshed against the
state / But if some fiendish criminal mind / Were to contemplate actions of a
similar kind…” This, coupled with the sugarcoated sheen of the music gives the
overall impression of pop music gone horribly wrong. Other highlights from this catalogue of subversion include “Businessman”,
an ironic ode to corporate mentality and slavery to one’s wage and “The Fruits”,
a wonderful reworking of a track from the Veruschka 10” (another Thrussell
project released on Ant-Zen in 2001) drenching the previous orchestral strains
with the gliding tones of country guitar.
As a companion to the main album,
Hymen have also released a double 12” set which, aside from the benefit of
seeing that sumptuous artwork rendered ten times the size, also contains a
bonus platter of remixes and reworkings of tracks from the album, such as End’s
dancefloor recontextualisation of “Businessman” and Black Lung’s masterful
off-beat deconstruction of “Justified Homicide”. However, the true show stealer is closing track, “Hooray!! (Live
from the Verandah)” which transmutes this classic Snog track into a
hillbilly-death-metal acoustic sing-a-long that is as masterful as it is
ridiculous.
Those who have been
disenchanted with Snog’s last offerings would be well advised to investigate Beyond
the Valley of the Proles. It
manages to carve itself an unclassifiable niche in the ever-burgeoning
electronic music scene and make everything you hate about music suddenly seem
fresh, exciting and fun. It’s
unbelievable to me that industrial and country manage to meld together so
perfectly…next thing you know we’ll have Johnny Cash playing Nine Inch Nails
songs…
Gavin Lees
24.03.2k3