Excepter
Presidence
Rating: 3.0/5.0
Label: Paw Tracks
Excepter is so often described in terms of what they are not. Not influenced by punk, pop, dance or world music. Not comparable to their contemporaries in Brooklyn noise, Black Dice or Animal Collective. Not bound by even your most far-out conceptualizations of music. Just what they are is still somewhat unclear--even through an eight year-career that's funneled a lifetime of material from their collective consciousness direct to your headphones. We've heard more than a dozen full-length and extended-play records, over 60 hours of raw, unedited podcasts and what they still claim to be "the longest mp3 on the Internet ever," 2007's nebulous, meandering, five-hour "40,000 Leagues Under the Sea." In such a context, this 138-minute double-live album actually seems quite reasonable.
The long and longer free-form jams of Presidence were culled from marathon improv performances dating all the way back to 2003, but you wouldn't know it without reading the press kit. Excepter may be perpetually giving aesthetic guidelines the finger, but their singular, anti-logical process has proven a stubborn imperative. Disc one begins with a six-part suite, "Teleportation," where a lonely industrial rhythm ties together cosmic synth, indiscernible wails and bizarre samples that careen through a transient background. The racket is initially familiar to Excepter fans, not far from the death-disco of Debt Dept's "Kill People." But the opener soon drifts on, its six subdivisions predicated on a sense of relative motion. "Kal" plunges forward with sounds that focus in the foreground and quickly pass, their fleeting structures dissolving behind you. "Lil" follows, stuck in a room of furious clocks; ticking, tocking, clicking and clacking, that soon give way to a wash of fuzz and drone in which you're left aimlessly adrift. The set stretches unrestrained over a full half-hour, sometimes hypnotic but often tedious.
Thankfully, the bulk of Presidence's tedium is embodied by only one track: the seven-minute and surprisingly conventional "Leng." Swirling woodwind rides a groove so bored with itself that it actually breaks for a quiet, flute-solo anti-crescendo. The repeated sampling of a nautical weather report that follows later on "The Anti-Noah" is comparatively brilliant--that's really saying something. Presidence doesn't get genuinely interesting until you've reached its title-track centerpiece, the 33-minute solo synthesizer performance from frontman John Fell Ryan. With a deft touch, he shifts piercing high notes in and out of focus, ultimately deconstructing the schizophrenic clusters into an ominous collection of harmonic drones. "Presidence" is most effective when Ryan piles layers into a trance-inducing mindfuck, but even his subtle shape shifting is often enough to draw attention for large chunks of the odyssey.
Ironically, for all the talk of Excepter as the antithesis of convention, the absolute best track on Presidence is the one incorporating a sense of structure that lasts more than a fleeting second. Closer "When You Call" may be the shortest offering, but it's the only that seems to exist with any purpose or direction. A sparse hip-hop bump pins layers of synth and sample that grow cacophonous into what I'm calling zombie crunk--yes, it's every bit as cool as that sounds.
Taken at once, Presidence is no doubt a daunting challenge, an album to be conquered rather than enjoyed. It's indulgent, esoteric and absurdly experimental. But taken in pieces, there's a lot to enjoy: brilliant slices of trippy, neo-psychedelia and blissful ambles through textured dream worlds. In measured doses, it's an unparalleled glimpse into the mind and process of six artists, unfiltered and uncensored. These seven epics stand as compelling evidence of the band's visionary commitment--no one knows quite what to call it, but they sure know how to make it.
by Brady Baker
