Review:'Gatekeepers, The' 'Nostalgia For The Great American Monoculture'
- Label: 'Think Like A Key Music'
- Genre: 'Post-Rock'
- Release Date: '15.11.24.'- Catalogue No: 'TLAK1180'
Our Rating:
Nostalgia For The Great American Monoculture is the second album by weird Apocalyptic prog-opera supergroup The Gatekeepers, who feature members of The Residents, Cheer Accident, Shawn Phillips, Molly Harvey, Aislinn Quinn, R. Stevie Moore, Bill Brovold, Dave Newhouse, Amy Denio, Renaldo M and Wally Sharrold et al.
The album opens with the odd folk of The Good Old Days and no its not the classic theme song for that monumental 70's TV institution, sadly not pulchritudinous, Ineffably turpitudinous, Surreally narcissistic, sadly wishing for a time before the world has gone to pot, with computers and corporations destroying what we used to think of a better times.
A Knight In Shining Tanktop is worried about impending nuclear war, of the sort Putin has been threatening for a while, yet all we have to save us is a man in a tank top, he hasn't even been tangoed, acid rain is falling, a distinctly off-key narration in keeping with the desperation they see at every turn, World War 3 gets closer by the hour.
Regulating Entrepreneurial Nirvana is askew Henry Cow influenced duet on the subject of how regulations stifle and destroy trade, the central trial for fraud and dodgy dealings, could relate to any number of big business figures of the last few years.
Zero Interest Self-Financing and other schemes get treated like they are in a mittel European prog dystopia, with strings and brass slowly swelling like the bank roll you envisage materializing from all your fans on Insta.
Trail Of Cookie Crumbs is sort of annoying prog opus with weird synths and odd noises that baffles the hell out of me.
The Immovable Type is a string led doom scroll though the cesspool of social media, you see article after article that ought to be essential reading, only you prefer to look at cat memes instead.
Phishing For Pigs has an off-drum pattern, askew musical backing and computer treated vocals, looking to get your information out of you, beware your information isn't safe with this song.
All The Content in the world can't save you from still feeling bored, they urge you to see the very latest Memes sound-tracked by squelchy strings.
Someone Else Is Me, And I Feel Fine they've been totally cloned and can now get on with being someone else, the musical oddness continues to make this an album of very uneasy listening.
How To Act Real is a DIY manual on how to not seem like a cyber version of yourself, bring back the real you, ditch the AI make over, ergonomically fused with strings, unsettling feeling of being watched at all times. The vocals go more and more Dagmar Krause In Camera, they make clear you can stream anything you want for free.
The Bad New Days seem to be what we have most days currently, even if this has a very 70's sound the lyrical content shows how screwed they know we all are.
The album then closes with 4 alternate mixes the first of which is Zero Interest Self Financing (Cult With No Name Remix) that gives it an almost ultramarine style workover, ready to be played at the oddest club spaces in the land.
A Knight In Shining Tanktop (Hollywood Edition) is full on action movie, Arnie to the rescue to stop the madness of all out nuclear war, we all shelter from the acid rain. Can the 80's superhero really come to our rescue or will Dolph Lundgren destroy us all.
Phishing For Pigs (persuasive mix) has hypnotic rhythm patterns that will make you spill all your data and allow your accounts to be drained before the tune is over, play this at your own peril, Passwords revealed, life transferred into the safe keeping of your Congolese sister.
The album closes with trail Of Cookie Crumbs (demo) of guitar extrusions slowly leading us to the messy crime scene deep in the impenetrable woods, living in the 2020's while wishing you could go back to the halcyon days of the 70's/80's/90's, Oh for a bankrupt New York, big shoulder pads and Dallas, that simpler Reaganite era, when conservatives were still conservative almost, or that’s my reading of this instrumental.
Find out more at https://www.thinklikeakey.com/release/466373-the-gatekeepers-nostalgia-for-the-great-american-monoculture
