The Geography of Dissolution

Album Review

The Geography of Dissolution is an experimental album, to say the least, and the only existing recording made by the four-man version of El Guapo. It captures two live sets from the band, both recorded in 1999. The first set (tracks 1-13) was recorded live to 8-track DAT during a show in the band's native Washington, D.C. The second set (tracks 14-23) was taken from a New York City show a couple months later. Both certainly do represent landscapes of sound, as opposed to conventionally structured rock songs. The album doesn't actually kick into a semi-recognizable song until the fourth track of the first set, and even that sounds like a tune drifting in an out of consciousness. In fact, it is not really rock music at all, but an enveloping, epic, punk-trimmed brand of out-there jazz made by thoroughly adventurous musicians. The four members run through a series of instruments (oboe, English horn, glockenspiel), but the bedrock of their sound is built from a unique keyboard/accordion setup and Nate Smith's outstanding drum work. The first set is a furtive, ungraspable creation, sometimes sounding like improvisatory free jazz, sometimes like the score to a dark, imagined fairy tale or ominous ballet, sometimes like atonal no wave. Amazingly, it never sounds noodly or directionless. But then it never quite sinks in on the first or second listen, either. The second set couldn't be more disparate. It is insistent, hypnotically electric, almost militaristically foreboding. Both are difficult listening, but they fully reward return visits. Fans of avant-garde rock (think Velvet Underground, Wire, Suicide) and free jazz especially will find much to absorb. The experience doesn't come off quite as astoundingly on record as you get the feeling it would have had you actually been there. But even the residual effects are exhilaratingly trippy.