Celebrating life is what I found myself doing, and I should have been cleaning! I played it for the second time in my kitchen, to provide a soundtrack for a long-delayed stint of housework. Not three tracks into this barnstorming long player I had thrown aside the mop and bucket in favour of a series of manic dance moves, as the rhythmic, trance-inducing pulse began to take possession of my soul.
'Celebration' is eponymously titled, Brooklyn recorded and TV on the Radio produced, with their guest vocal appearances adding depth to the cacophony.The three piece outfit have created music that hints strongly at almost anything you could care to think of, though its overall feel is for dance. The character is one of mystique, but the life of it depends upon the many ways that near-antique, traditional and even ancient instruments are combined brilliantly to recreat house/techno in its own image.
The result is a series of deep seated and infectious grooves and beats that you will flow and bounce with, with one ear tuned into the haunting malady of Katrina Ford’s primal vocals as they weave their own spell high above the chaos. There is an opening drum roll – and then this unique celebration of music’s power unfolds, with each track demonstrating an uncanny ability to hold you under a hazy spell.
The powerful knack of reworking the past into something brand new is based on the multi-instrumental talents of Sean Antanaiatis, who mans not just the Hammond (and other) organs, but also Moog bass pedals and all manner of contraptions that involve analogue signals. The echoing grind forms a backbone to each track, and David Bergander skitter-scatters the drums to deepen the chaotic racket. The near-insane vocals are a garbled and disjointed incomprehensibility, as the voices melt beautifully under the heat of emotion they are conveying.
The thumping beats and wails of ‘War’ are followed by the darkly ambient carousel of ‘Diamonds’. This haunting music-box tune spirals downwards in a burning, yearning tango with Ford’s lyrics of self destruction, ending in a whistle through the teeth, and from this point onwards I was hooked. ‘Holiday’ and ‘Foxes’ are both slices of tranced out hypnosis, the latter fractured by a drum ‘n ‘bass crossfire, but ‘China’ sees a subtle shift to jungle rhythms, dropping beautifully and in and out like a cinematic soundtrack: “Don’t say your walls are falling down…..” are perhaps the first clearly delivered lyrics to be heard as pop’s muse steers the party to dizzy and gorgeous heights.
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‘Lost Souls’ pirrhouettes back down once more, and the razor sharp carousels return. It’s quite simply beautiful: “There’s (just) too many lost souls…” intones the vocal mantra as the Hammond organ grinds out a funereal undercurrent. By and large, the lyrical contribution is all abstract emotion, with brief flashes of clarity. How well that works with the use of drums and simpler percussion to create rhythms that echo the structures of house music!
It sounds for all the world like loops, beats and breaks, emitting a pulsating trancelike signal. yet there is a live feel that the feet find near impossible to resist. Though it sounds fresh out of the box, brief grinding organ interludes seem to reach back in time through distorted amplification as you abandon your consciousness and reach deeper (listen for the manic foot-pumping that precedes the penultimate track).
‘Stars’, the final track, climaxes amidst a wave of stunning biorhythmic percussion. I am left spellbound and breathless. I am floored by the energy created. I feel alive.
That ‘Celebration’ is almost certain to be interpreted in vastly different ways is testament to a sound which leaves no stone unturned in its attempts to lose itself.Much of its mystique lies in its absolute refusal to be filed away. That for me is the huge appeal, along with its genre defying strength.
From a place where it can reach us all, 'Celebration' gyrates to an idiosyncratic pulse that keeps perfect time with our beating hearts and the decks.
http://www.myspace.com/celebrationcelebration
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