Indie Selections For Your Erections: Lightning Bolt

Drum & bass is an unfortunate genre. That's one of downsides of Kraftwerk, the whole club 4/4 thumpin' ecstasy popping rave scene that would eventually become an electronica subdivision. Actually I'm completely ignorant to the differences between techno, house, trance and drum & bass. What I've heard though is house= boring techno, trance = pretentious techno, and drum & bass = minimalist techno. What is techno? Obnoxious. I can never wrap my head around that scene. I do like Apex Twin though.

Lightning Bolt, a duo from my wonderful home state of Rhode Island are a different type of drum and bass. Their music consists of drum...and bass. Two guys, two instruments. "Drum and bass?" one may say. "That sounds boring." I would smack that person across the face, throw on Wonderful Rainbow and trample that misconception into the ground and out of their minds. When you're lacking in band members, to make music that sounds just as commanding as a full band, you have to put a lot into your playing. Say you have a 10 member band, excessive orchestra section, all that. Each member could just half-ass it and to the average listener it would sound perfectly fine. However, when it's just two guys, you don't have the protective shield that numbers offer you. Every note you play counts. That said, Lightning Bolt at times will rock as hard as anything else you've ever heard. My favorite song of theirs, "Dracula Mountain" has a build-up about 3 minutes in which leads to such an expulsion of pure rawk that it's practically impossible not to bang your head, pump your fist, or do whichever dance that flies your weird flag the highest. It's the epitome of rock, and a section that I'll often use in a judging scheme for rating how hard something actually rocks. I grade my rock levels on a curve, and "Dracula Mountain" is that kid who always aces the test.

Lightning Bolt - Dracula Mountain

"See you on the evening
See you in the dawn
See you all today long
Then I will be gone

See you in the evening
See you in the dawn
See you all today long
Then in the beyond"

Good luck actually making out those lyrics. Brian Chippendale, Lightning Bolt's drummer and "vocalist" sings using a modified phone receiver strapped to the inside of his mouth. Brian Gibson is also unconventional with his bass, using a cello tuning, CDGA rather than the typical EADG and uses a banjo string for the top A.

Now for an incredible live video featuring my said favorite part of "Dracula Mountain." Whoa.