{"id":393,"date":"2010-12-06T07:54:10","date_gmt":"2010-12-06T12:54:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=393"},"modified":"2010-12-06T07:54:10","modified_gmt":"2010-12-06T12:54:10","slug":"album-review-neon-indian-mind-ctrl-psychic-chasms-possessed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2010\/12\/06\/album-review-neon-indian-mind-ctrl-psychic-chasms-possessed\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Neon Indian – Mind Ctrl: Psychic Chasms Possessed"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Neon If one wishes to maintain an open mind about music — or any of the arts, for that matter — one must be receptive to influences from a wide variety of sources. With that in mind I try to listen to anything my 17-year-old son thinks worth my time. His taste is quite varied, spanning the gamut from Cole Porter<\/strong> and Johnny Mathis<\/strong> to Wolfmother<\/strong>. And plenty in between.<\/p>\n

He digs a lot more of the modern synthetic\/sampled\/chopped\/channeled sounds than do I, but since he knows my general likes and dislikes, he generally only suggests music he thinks I have a fair chance of appreciating. Over the last few months I’ve developed a tolerance (but little more) for Arcade Fire<\/strong>, but I like it more when he spins his vinyl of Pet Sounds<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Some months ago he turned me on to a vinyl LP by Neon Indian<\/strong>. Classified as “psychedelic indie dance,” that’s about right. What hooked me about this band was the same thing that impressed me about Ice-T<\/strong> on his groundbreaking opus O.G. Original Gangster<\/em>: the deft and knowing use of samples and loops from outside sources. But merely taking other stuff and re-purposing it is not enough: the resulting product needs ot stand on its own as something new. So where Ice-T appropriated the riff from “Black Sabbath” into his own “Midnight,” so do Neon Indian work in samples from a wide variety of sources. 1970s AM radio pop, the Doobie Brothers,<\/strong> and others. The group’s use of Todd Rundgren<\/a><\/strong>‘s “Izzat Love” for their own “Deadbeat Summer” is an expert example of musical re-purposing.<\/p>\n

“Terminally Chill” is built around La Bionda<\/strong>‘s “You’re So Fine” but actually sounds more like it used bits of Captain and Tennille<\/strong>‘s “Love Will Keep Us Together.” Nothing here quite reaches the brilliance of like-minded Atlas Sound<\/strong>‘s recasting of the Dovers’<\/strong> transcendent obscurity “What Am I Going to Do” into a new track called “Walkabout,” but it’s all interesting and enjoyable, and bears repeated listening.<\/p>\n

Neon Indian’s LP Psychic Chasms<\/em> has itself been retitled and re-purposed on an expanded CD release called Mind Ctrl: Psychic Chasms Possessed<\/em>. It includes the vinyl’s twelve tracks and appends to that nine more tracks. The bonus tracks are remixes from the likes of Toro y Moi<\/strong>, and continue to push the limits of musical reuse. Almost the remix equivalent of a game of telephone, the remixes largely succeed at making the songs into something else again. It will be interesting to see and hear where Neon Indian take things going forward.<\/p>\n

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