We Are Scientists - 'After Hours'
Ah, the drone...such a powerful musical tool, and the basis of a very high percentage of all the world's musical forms (if you include folk music, world music, and hip hop, and why wouldn't you? Mm?). It is deceptively tricky to use effectively too. You can either keep the same bass note and change the chords over the top, so there's some movement in the music, or you can invent a kind of circular pattern of notes which go around and around while the root chords shift underneath.
Do it right, and you create a mesmeric, hypnotic, musical mantra which it's impossible to grow weary of (unless you need to get some sleep, obv) because there's always something new to focus on, some new hidden rhythm or texture that has only just made itself clear.
Do it wrong, and it's just a boring, monotonous sludge with no respite and no ideas. And the brilliant thing is there's really not that much which seperates a head-spinning, breath-taking raga from a load of noodly old rubbish. What you also need to bring to the pot is a sense of dynamics, of rise and fall, peaks and troughs, little and large, cannon and ball, morecombe and wise...that kind of thing.
Being boffiny types, We Are Scientists clearly already know this stuff. And what they've chosen to do is a mixture of both sorts of drone arrangement, over a rhythm which is so suited to driving, it's surprising Jeremy Clarkson hasn't attempted to mount it and race it to Switzerland.
There's a twiddly guitar riff running all the way through the song like the words in a stick of seaside rock, and the bass shifts underneath it, in a snaky fashion. But there are also moments where everything is still basically playing just the one chord, and that's when the Wees (much more fitting than the Scientists, donchathink?) bring in little curlicues of Eastern strings, or tinkly bells and backing vocals. Anything to keep your attention, really.
Now, the only trouble with this approach is it can appear a little characterless. I mean this could easily be a Stereophonics cover, or an Interpol song, or an Editors song. And the one thing you should know about the Wees is that they are NOT characterless people, as a brief listen to their b-sides album 'Crap Attack' will prove.
So, while three stars may seem a harsh mark, it's just a way of saying expectations have not been met. And that sometimes a drone is just a drone, no matter how well done.
Download: Out now
CD Released: March 3rd
(Fraser McAlpine)
Comments
hy why spend all your time doing something boring why dont u do anythink else but that ?
[Who says I don't do anything else? You never heard of Scrabble, young missy? - Fraser]