medicine's buried life bio

From the heart of the San Fernando Valley comes MEDICINE, a highly skewered pop band who use dissonance like most other bands use E Major chords. On last year's Shot Forth Self Living, they seemed hell bent to blow out your tweeters with a non-stop flurry of fierce guitar noise that fizzed and whirred on top of impossibly sweet pop songs. Their new American Recordings album, The Buried Life, finds them buried "up to our eyes" in a veritable Whitman's sampler of candy colored pop/noise, but this time, they're more painterly in their approach. A splash of squeal here, a dollop of slushy short wave radio snow there, a sickeningly sleazy disco beat, a dub-like bass throb and even a lovely/folksy string and keyboard arrangement on "Live it Down" by the legendary Van Dyke Parks. In fact, stripped of all noise for the first quarter of the song, the sparse, almost country and western sounds, (complete with pizzicato strings, oboe and jangly piano) make it one of the most shocking pieces on the record. Clearly, MEDICINE is not a band on the search for a formula. "We compose by throwing the I Ching , consulting the oracle, killing the fatted calf," quips drummer Jim Goodall.

Thoroughly unpredictable, every song on The Buried Life seems to be separated little symphony of psychedelia. It's an excursion into thoroughly modern brain expansion, one where the sounds weave themselves through the songs, some only revealing themselves after repeated listenings. And by that time, you'll find yourself mesmerized by the kaleidoscopic landscapes of sounds that swirl tantalizingly in the mix. The Buries Life is the kind of record that MEDICINE guitarist/vocalist/songwriter/producer Brad Laner proudly hopes will "confuse the hell out of everybody while drawing them into our tangled web."

In 1991, Laner spun MEDICINE out of the innumerable side projects and home-made tapes that he and his teenage pals had been toying with since junior high school. While their classmates were trading baseball cards, Laner and his bunch collected Can, Beach Boys and Stockhausen bootlegs. In the queasy Los Angeles art-punk underground of the early-to-mid '80's, Laner was a constant musical force. It was with the John Cage inspired cut and run noise projects Debt of Nature and Severed Head in a Bag that Laner hooked up with MEDICINE drummer Jim Goodall, who was leading a double life as a session and touring drummer for various "straight" acts like The Flying Burrito Brothers and blues shouter Arthur Adams. Laner met MEDICINE vocalist/songwriter Beth Thomps on when she was crooning with local atmospheric bloom rockers Four Way Cross. When he was putting MEDICINE together, Laner knew that Thompson's subtle, soft vocal style was just the right element for the music. He was looking to create a sweet-and-sour mix; music that could worm its way into your soul while jolting the system. And on The Buried Life, they've upped the ante by making the music more alluringly subversive.

Laner recorded much of The Buried Life on an 8-track recorder that's set up in his bedroom, nestled in close proximity to his immense record collection that runs the gamut from Albert Ayler to ZZ Top, and an almost complete collection of food preparation albums. "That's the best way for me to get weird, fucked up guitar sounds." Laner says. "I was afraid that I couldn't achieve the same results in a grown-up studio. And by the way, don't count food out of our musical sphere. I'm influenced by what I like, even if some people might find my taste ridiculous."

It seems like MEDICINE wants to be both the eye of the hurricane and the storm. "This record is far more varied than Shot Forth Self Living," says Laner. "Now our noise isn't such a sheen, it's more unexpected. Each piece is a separate little experiment. We go from pure pop songs like 'Fried Awake' to major excursions in noise like 'The Earth is Soft and White.' We're always shifting and trying to amuse ourselves." To which Thompson adds, "Basically, we're writing about things that you only wish that you could do."

Here's Brad's track breakdown of The Buried Life : "The Pink" -- Not liking somebody, but having sex with them anyway. This one starts out in the same way as our last record, but then quickly moves in another direction. The guitars were all recorded at home for that stingy (not Sting-ey) sound. "Babydoll" -- What happens when you compare someone to a piece of plastic. The ultimate candy pop song that we've messed up with sick chord changes that shouldn't work, but somehow do. "Slut" -- The story of a woman rapist. A sleazy Latin disco thing that's our tribute to the Miami Sound Machine. "She Knows Everything" -- It's about Beth, who does seem to know everything. The lo-fi guitar sounds were recorded in my bedroom. "Something Goes Wrong" -- This one's about me being a total hermit. Southern fried rock, the Byrds meet the Hollies. "Never Click" --Giving somebody the kiss off. There's an orchestra of hundreds of funny guitar sounds that mask the fact that it's basically just a pure pop song. "Fried Awake" -- This one came out so nice that it scared the hell out of us. "Beneath the Sands" -- My person al favorite because of all of the short-wave radio sounds. It confuses most everybody. Which is a good thing. "Emmeline" - An audio landscape depicting the love between woman and toad. "I Hear" -- Our power ballad about corpses. "Live It Down" -- We called Van Dyke Parks out to arrange this one because we figured that he could do an epic '60s arrangement. He did, and the song comes off like the Velvet Underground produced by Phil Spector. "The Earth is Soft and White" -- Listen as Jim and I work out our frustrations that our first noise improv band, Debt of Nature, never made a record.

The Buried Life was produced by Brad Laner between September 1992 and July 1993. It was recorded at Hammer in Chatsworth, CA, with additional recording done in Brad's living room in the wee hours of the night, completely naked.

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