Dusted Reviews
Artist: M. Gira/D. Matz Album: What We Did Label: Young God Review date: Mar. 31, 2002 |
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A Slow Education
Humanity was created on a gray, humid summer afternoon. We’d been waiting for something awful to happen all day. Immediately cursed with a self-concept and cognizance of history, the human was immediately doomed to annihilate itself through a combination of hubris and guilt. Things progressed very slowly.
On this day, the gods, Michael Gira (ex-Swans, The Angels Of Light) and Dan Matz (Windsor For The Derby), pooled their collective demons, consigning them to occasionally awkward, often transcendent collaborations. After equipping them with acoustic guitars and decorating their
habitat with eerie whirrs and drones, Gira and Matz sent the demons to roam the earth. Sometimes these foolishly proud humans cleaved to their own kind and made beautiful, lulling music together. Sometimes, they hastily decided to stray and defiantly stuck to their newly chosen paths, even after being punished for their inability to make do with the established points and angles.
Pervasively enthralled with all that would eventually destroy them, they thirsted and they slaked.
In the meantime, these outcasts, too, made some jaw-dropping music. In both camps, the men were prone to make the women suffer through their unhinged self-indulgence and repent through wrenching self-reproach. The women were forgiving, though a bit creepy in their unfailing stoicism. Before it all reached its ill-timed end, there were plenty of hurt feelings all around, devastating moments of clarity and the sort of cleansing catharsis that the post-humans have never quite rivaled with comparably bloodless tributes to their own solipsism. These humans had something palpably inspiring going on. But I wouldn’t’ve wanted to be one of them.
By Emerson Dameron
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View all articles by Emerson Dameron
