SCORN

mjeanes

Whine was recorded live in Rome directly to digital audio tape (DAT). For those of you that have ever wondered what it's like to see Scorn live (I know I have), you can get a taste of it with this release on Invisible Records. With some interesting remixes of songs from the album "Zander" plus a few originals, you get to hear how Mick Harris mixes his beats. "Whine" also includes a bonus album "Beat" that is just great. The whole "Beat" album was initially made for the rap artist Khalil strangely enough, but for some reason this alliance never came to pass.

Fleshpile

So why put out a live version of the "ZandER" studio album? Especially when SCORN consists at this late point of just MICK HARRIS, some pre-recorded backing tracks and a rack of fx boxes? Well, for starters, despite having lots of cash injected into the studio album's release, the distribution was so appaling that it's doubtful it reached more than a handful of possible SCORN followers. And secondly this gives you a totally different perspective - the fevered labouring towards perfection which occured in the studio gives way to chance events in a live situation - you can't turn the clock back and alter levels if the came out wrong - can't be done. But then SCORN live was an event in itself - a chance for MICK to let his hair down and create a noise, and this he does on this album. Most obviously this occurs at the opening where we wait through several minutes through a kind of in your face variation on the LULL theme for the tinny drums to kick into life. And as with the original version, there's a very experimental approach to the drumming - not as broken as earlier solo SCORNs, but rather paradiddling in odd juxtapositions to the central core of the beat. It's a kind of logical progression from earlier works and sees the musician almost totally divorced from his Dub roots, with the strident basslines of the first three albums replaced by the lower, ponderous Bass Station which swims in dark circles like a shark smelling blood. But away from the clinical perfection of the studio you have such a plethora of noises that suddenly lurch out at you or grizzle and lurk beyond the gates of the percussion that you begin to wish that SCORN had kept the studio albums locked away and only released live versions!

High quality live recording which can only have been lifted from the desk (there's none of the dimensional muting found on bootlegs - this might almost be an alternative studio mix). "ZandER" was a good album - this is a great one! So if you missed out on getting a copy, get this instead!

The four studio tracks which are tucked away at the end are again a pristine quality but somehow lack the chance event tension of the live material. Nevertheless these four have enough rich quality not to be merely album fillers but gems which might otherwise not have seen light of day. They are more lush, light and ambient than most of the studio album's material, and less skeletal with the various samples and fx rising up and becoming front focus rather than background colouration. These pieces probably marked the transition from SCORN to THE WEAKENER, the interrim project between death and rebirth in Y2K.

This was supposed to be the concluding moment in the SCORN story, but new life has been breathed into the project, so look out!

Antony Burnham (courtesy of the Metamorphic Journeyman website)