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Medicine
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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 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/folky 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 in search of 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 a 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 Buried 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 Thompson 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."
In a fantastic teaming of three pivotal players in alternative music, MEDICINE has joined forces with Robin Guthrie of the Cocteau Twins in a striking remix of the MEDICINE classic, "Time Baby 3," and with Smashing Pumpkins' Billy Corgan for a remix of "She Knows Everything." The tracks are be included on the group's EP, The Sounds of Medicine.
"Time Baby 3" originally appeared as a B-side on MEDICINE's 1992 UK EP 5ive. The song was then recently remixed by Guthrie for the new EP with Elizabeth Fraser of the Cocteau Twins joining MEDICINE's Beth Thompson on background vocals. "She Knows Everything," a track originally heard on MEDICINE's current album, was remixed by Smashing Pumpkins' Billy Corgan. The Buried Life
In addition to the EP, a version of "Time Baby 3" is a key featured track on the current soundtrack to the Miramax Films fantasy action thriller The Crow, starring the late Brandon Lee. Not only does MEDICINE's song appear on the Atlantic Records soundtrack album, but the band itself also appears in the film, performing "Time Baby 3" live.
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American Recordings
Jim Goodall, Beth Thompson & Brad Laner