Biography
The
5uu's are a difficult band to pin down. On the one hand,
everyone refers to them as "RIO," and composer Dave Kerman
uses the term on the official website. Their early heroes
were the Art Bears, and they even recorded their fourth album,
Crisis in Clay, on Chris Cutler's farm in France, which
certainly seems to give them some "RIO cred." On the
other hand, they're a lot more clearly rock-based than the
original RIO bands: until Regarding Purgatories, they
never had a single track over seven minutes, and their material
tended to be fairly song-based. Their characteristic sound
is also influenced by Kerman's fondness for strange percussion
instruments (see picture) and his harmonic language, a wonderful
mixture of atonality and a vaguely Eastern European-sounding
modality.
The 5uu's came
into existence when Kerman decided to do some experimental
recording in the early 80s. The core of the group was
bassist Jon Beck, with whom Kerman had been in a hard rock
cover band in high school, and a pop singer (!) named Curt
Wilson; they took the name "5uu's" from some graffiti in LA,
hoping that it would make good advertising. It didn't
work, because nobody really paid attention to the 5uu's during
the 80s. They teamed up with James Grigsby's chamber
group the Motor Totemist Guild for their second album, Elements,
but it was not until the two groups merged to create U Totem
that they started to receive some recognition.
After U Totem,
Kerman reformed the 5uu's from scratch, enlisting keyboardist
Sanjay Kumar (from U Totem) and vocalist and bassist Bob Drake
(from Thinking Plague). This lineup produced two albums;
the first, Hunger's Teeth, got a lot of attention in
the avant-prog world, although the denser and heavier Crisis
in Clay has not fared as well.
The 00s brought
yet another incarnation of the band, this time featuring Deborah
Perry on vocals. Kerman says he considers these "more
like solo albums," so the CDs are attributed to "Dave Kerman/5uu's"
rather than simply "5uu's." By this time, Kerman's compositions
have become more expansive and complex: Regarding Purgatories
and Abandonship have songs from the seven to ten minute
range, and are generally more varied and less song-based than
the 90s material. -
Alex Temple [February 2002]
Hunger's
Teeth (1994)
Hunger's
Teeth is probably
the best place to start for a symphonic prog fan trying to get
into RIO. This is not to say that the album sounds much
like symphonic prog, which would be very surprising given drummer
and composer Dave Kerman's distaste for the genre. There
are a few reference points in common, though.
I'm not the
first to suggest this album as an intro to RIO for the symph
fan. The suggestion is made constantly on rec.music.progressive,
usually accompanied by a reference to vocalist Bob Drake,
and how much he sounds like Jon Anderson of Yes. Personally,
I don't hear the similarity nearly as much here as I do on
his solo album What Day Is It?. The two singers might
have similar ranges, but they only sound the same on occasion;
Yes fans might hear something familiar in the more stripped
down, melodic sections of "Geronimo," or the opening of "Opportunity
Bangs," but Anderson wouldn't be caught dead singing the way
Drake does at the end of "Well...Not Chickenshit" (nasal and
pinched) or "Glue" (distorted and out of tune).
For me, what
makes Hunger's Teeth a good starting point is simply
that it's fairly accessible, but without sacrificing
any of the juicy stuff that makes RIO fun. While many
of the original RIO bands wrote extended instrumental compositions,
these are really rock songs, only one exceeding six minutes
in length. They are generally vocal oriented (but not
lyric oriented, which is good, because Kerman's lyrics leave
something to be desired), and most have passages of relative
consonance amid the noise and atonality. Many of the
tunes are more chromatically modal than they are truly atonal.
Certain familiar textures from symphonic prog show up occasionally,
like the digital piano figurations in "Well...Not Chickenshit,"
the almost lush textures at the end of "Roan," and the almost
satirical use of that symph cliché, the Heavily Accented
Chord, on the word "offspring" in "Opportunity Bangs." As
those of you who have read my profile know, I'm not much of
a symph fan, so the fact that I love this album is a testament
to the fact that these elements are not overdone, and probably
not even intentional.
Actually, it
is the interplay between accessibility and inaccessibility
that makes this album really interesting. While most
of the songs are quite likable at first listen (assuming you're
used to highly chromatic, dissonant music), they don't fall
into the trap of being overly clear, which means that it takes
many listens to uncover everything that's going on in the
music. Many songs contrast downright pretty passages
with all-out noisefests; the most obvious example is "Geronimo,"
which ranges from a subtle combination of quiet vocals, percussion
and electronic organ to total polyrhythmic chaos. "Truth,
Justice and the American Way," too, precedes the rhythmically
displaced but fairly tuneful rock of its final section with
something that can only be described as an extremely nasal,
atonal Beach Boys with digital keyboards.
These contrasts
are really the result of the spirit of playful experimentation
that pervades the whole album. Sometimes the band seems
to be just trying things out, which gives us Drake's barbershop
song about barbers, "The Shears," and a short minimalist electronic
piece by Thomas DiMuzio called "Mangate." This willingness
to try a lot of different things gives Hunger's Teeth
a wonderful textural variety, unlike the other album from
Kerman/Kumar/Drake lineup of the 5uu's, 1997's Crisis in
Clay. At the same time, Kerman's compositional style
is very distinctive, so it holds together nicely, even when
Susanne Lewis takes over to sing the last two songs.
Her style, much less emotional than Drake's, fits perfectly
on top of the dissonant rock-out of "Traveler Waits for No
One," and the album goes out with a bang. - Alex Temple
[October 2001]
Click
Here for Tracklist and Lineup Info
Crisis
In Clay (1997)
I used to have a recurring fantasy in which I would encounter
some obnoxious stereotypical metalhead -- you know, the kind
who thinks the music he listens to is the toughest stuff the
world has ever known. Said pretentious jerk would of course
challenge me to come up with something as violent and scary
as his stuff. I would play him "Comeuppance," the first
track of the 5uu's Crisis in Clay, and he would run away
whimpering.
Yeah, it's that
tough. First of all, it's fiercely dissonant and all
that fun RIO stuff. Secondly, it's incredibly rhythmically
complex -- Dave Kerman notes on the 5uu's website that the
simplest way to notate it would be in 53/32. And finally,
it rocks really hard. Not just heavy, but kicking-your-ass-into-the-ground
aggressive. "Guerilla rock," says Kerman. This
is, of course, a good thing.
That brief description
of "Comeuppance" pretty much sums up the difference between
this album and the previous effort from the Drake/Kerman/Kumar
lineup of the 5uu's, Hunger's Teeth. Crisis
is tighter, denser, more aggressive, heavier, and more obsessed
with perverse mechanical rhythms. It even verges on
assaultive at times, as in the high-strung vocals and harsh
synth solo on "The Willful Suspension of Disbelief," or the
buildup in "Darkened Doors" from limping piano-based chamber
rock to a minute or so of all-out noise.
Strangely, though,
I don't like it as much as either Hunger's Teeth or
Regarding Purgatories. Some thoughts on why:
OBJECTION #1: It sounds like Yes!
Response: Well, it kind of does
at times, especially Bob Drake's Anderson-ish vocals.
But, except for the annoying chord progressions of "Absolutely
Absolute," any comparison to Yes has to be made to the more
psychotic parts of Relayer, with all that saccharine
"soon, oh soon the light" crap sliced out with surgical precision.
Oh, and the 5uu's have more of a maniacally precise "math
rock" vibe to them than Yes ever did.
OBJECTION #2: The lyrics! Oh god, the lyrics!
Response: OK, yeah, Crisis
does contain some of the worst lyrics ever penned. Example:
"Even the olive leaf / From the topmost bough / When it missed
the ark / Was quickly taught / How to sink or swim / By the
pallor of doves" (from "Broadside Hits and Near Misses").
Another example: "Steadfast in the moonlight, said dualists,
from crenellations fight to keep their walls, rise and
fall by strengths dramatic irony on stakes afire to hence
reaffirm valor" (from "December"). However -- here's the catch
-- you can't understand a word Drake sings, so it doesn't
matter. Just don't look at the booklet.
OBJECTION #3: Cheesy synths!
Response: There are a few cheesy
string synths here and there, notably in one part of "The
How-To's of Self-Taught" that always reminds me of the soundtrack
to SimCity 2000. But if you can deal with Thinking Plague's
In Extremis, you're more than prepared for Crisis.
OBJECTION #4: Crappy ending!
Response: This actually is a problem.
"Absolutely Absolute" isn't that bad, but it has some really
tacky Yes-ish chord progressions in it. Even if you
like that sort of thing, it feels somewhat out of place here.
"Ringing in the New Ear" is pretty pointless, being 42 seconds
of near silence. I usually skip these tracks.
OBJECTION #5: Lack of variety!
Response: I must admit, this is
the real problem I have with the album. Hunger's
Teeth had a huge variety of textures and tonalities, two
different vocalists, and weird interludes like a barbershop
quartet and an electronic piece. Here, pretty much every
song is equally thick and dense, and while almost every track
is great, I find it difficult to listen to the whole album.
Some songs do stand out, like the frenetic rocker "Weaponry,"
the weirdly catchy and slightly jazzy "Bought the Farm," and
"What Price Virtue?", with its near-techno precision drumming
and UU-ified slide guitar quotation from Tales from Topographic
Oceans. After a while, though, the ubiquitous loud
drumming and heavy guitars cause much of the album to blur
together, so that sections like the wonderful angular "clockwork"
guitars in "The Encounter" go by almost unnoticed. Obvious
moments of clarity, like the quiet synth and guitar counterpoint
in the opening of "Cirrus," are far too rare. To really enjoy
the album, I have to take a break halfway through.
- Alex Temple
[November 2001]
Click
Here for Tracklist and Lineup Info
Regarding
Purgatories (2000)
Regarding Purgatories
marks the beginning of a new incarnation of the 5uu's.
Dave Kerman took greater control over the creative process,
changed the official name of the group to "Dave Kerman/5uu's,"
and got a new vocalist, Thinking Plague's Deborah Perry.
He also started branching out musically -- the album contains
both a greater variety of compositional techniques and some
longer, more abstract pieces than had appeared on previous
5uu's releases.
"Meteora,"
the album's wonderful opener, is a great example of how
00s 5uu's differs from 90s 5uu's. Not only is it
completely instrumental except for some distorted Medieval-ish
chants that slosh around occasionally, but the first two
minutes consist entirely of ambient synthesized foghorns
and piano strings being scraped with keys. And when
the drums and bass do come crashing in, it's simply amazing,
especially when they're joined by a surprisingly Thinking
Plague-like angular guitar line to create one of the most
propulsive, satisfying passages the band has ever done.
This
is not to say that all of the album is so abstract --
Kerman has certainly not given up his talent for catchiness,
and "Drachma" could almost be an avant-prog single, with
its infectious, convolutedly folky melody and well-placed
solo for walkie-talkie feedback. But it's nice to
set this off against pieces like "Half-Akin to Gladsome,"
an intermezzo for voice and piano that's more delicate
than almost anything on Hunger's Teeth. And
it's hard to argue with the viscous, bubbling, brilliant
organ solo in "String of Hey-Days" (which actually reminds
me of a much more aggressive version of James Grigsby's
work in U Totem), or the unexpected vocal part of "Pinwheel,"
in which Perry's voice splinters into four different tracks
and reflects off itself, simultaneously extremely strange
and indescribably beautiful.
I have to
admit, not every piece on the album is perfect.
A few tracks, like "To Fall on Deaf Ears part one," drag
a little in places, and Perry's attempt to sound like
Dagmar Krause at the beginning of "Stand On Ceremony"
is pretty weak. While the epic "To Fall on Deaf
Ears part two" is mostly excellent, complete with a powerful,
ponderous and extremely grim-sounding middle section that
puts Univers Zero to shame, it ends so abruptly that it
sounds like they ran out of tape while recording it --
a rather jarring effect whose aesthetic purpose continues
to baffle me. Still, the amount of good on this
highly underrated disc so outweighs the bad in both quality
and quantity that I think Regarding Purgatories
may be my favorite 5uu's album. Anyone hesitating
to buy it because of the flak it sometimes gets on r.m.p,
I urge you to keep and open mind and give it a try. -
Alex Temple [May 2002]
Click
Here for Tracklist and Lineup Info
Abandonship (2002)
"The
social content of works of art sometimes rests precisely
in the protest against social reception, particularly
in relation to conventional and hardened forms of consciousness.
From a certain historical threshold,
which could be located about the middle of the nineteenth
century, this is the general rule with autonomous
creations. A sociology of art which neglected this fact
would become just a technique in the service
of those agencies which want to calculate how to get customers."
Theodor Adorno - “Theses on the Sociology of Art 1967”
True
artistic endeavors generally are dismissed by the mass of
observers/listeners guided by what they've already experienced
or what commercial appeal defines as the current sociological
forum of expression. Be it musical, written, painted or
spoken the pure form of creative energy that unfolds Is
rarely something that is oft not repeated nor mass produced,
thus playing out to condemnation and misunderstanding. True
genius treads unchallenged paths of exploration opening
up worlds for others to follow. Dave Kerman is such an individual.
For the uninitiated his forms of musical exploration seem
undisciplined and crude. What lies within Abandonship
upon focused investigation is a cohesive unity and playful
abandonment seldom duplicated or attempted. Under
the genre of “RIO” (rock in opposition) Kerman
has continued his march to illumination with this his 5th
release under the 5UU’s banner.
Relocating to Tel Aviv Israel in 2000,
Kerman has found a companion to accompany him on this sonic
journey. Udi Koomran is responsible for capturing and translating
those ideas into a cohesive whole as co-producer with Kerman
on this effort, along with Thinking Plaque vocalist Deborah
Perry. Dave Kerman has once again struck a chord in the
collective memory of musical curiosities and provided the
listener with something to return to repeatedly discovering
new things with each spin of the disc. Abandonship
opens with “Yordes Hasira #2”, with Michal Ezrony
reciting “You must be joking” as we're introduced
with drum and various studio sound affects used with the
utmost craftsmanship. “He asked me do you know it
by heart, I said no you must be joking” adds Michal
towards the end emphasizing that this is non familiar musical
territory, new experiences to be had. “Couple
#3 is a Solo” with the underlying layers of Bass/piano
and Deborah Perry’s vocals along with the recorded
tap dancing of Zahi Patish mesh resonantly with the recorded
bits and pieces of abstract sounds giving the whole piece
an air of Thinking Plague at their most inventive moments.
The corner stones that hold this baby
in place are “Thoroughly Modern Atilla” and
“Noah’s Flame” the later containing some
of the most inventive and driven RIO I've heard in a long
time. Powerfully driven by a compositional modern day wizard,
Dave Kerman and 5UU’s continue to traverse to corners
seldom seen or heard. For those listeners who have the understanding
of what is being attempted, reward is assured. For those
who want to expand their horizons beyond commonplace musical
structures, Abandonship dishes up a wealth of goodies
yet to be discovered. Like it or not, Dave Kerman is a force
to be reckoned with and true to form it will be on his terms
and not the musical society or market place of 2002 who
will determine where that path will take him on his next
musical odyssey into the abyss. I heartily await the next
journey. -
Mark Gaines [July 2002]
Click
Here for Tracklist and Lineup Info
