Robert Poss – Distortion Is Truth/Crossing Casco Bay
(Trace Elements)

The name Robert Poss didn’t ring any bells with me, and so upon receiving these two discs to review I didn’t really know what I was getting into. For all I knew, this was an independent folk singer/songwriter hawking his lo-fi home recordings, and quite frankly the thought was a little off-putting. I should have looked more closely at the album artwork, because the collection of gadgetry and electronic diagrams would have been my first clue that there is nothing folky about these records. When I finally got around to reluctantly listening to these albums, I was quite intrigued to hear something very refreshing and unique.

Robert Poss, as it turns out, was a member of the Band Of Susans, an avante-garde rock group from New York in the late 80’s/early 90’s. I didn’t know much about this band except that Helmet’s Page Hamilton had a short stint with them, and hearing these songs now explains a lot about Page Hamilton’s own experimental guitar leanings.

Distortion Is Truth and Crossing Casco Bay are collections of recordings made by Poss in the years since the break up of Band Of Susans. Some tracks are live, often improvised, while others were captured in a studio. Each track individually is more or less a work of “sonic art”, a mixture of guitar feedback, distortion, and electronic gadgetry that vary from 5 minute noise pieces and droning abstract layers of sound to more straightforward rock songs, some even with vocals. However, it is all very clearly the work of a talented man, one who has studied and mastered every aspect of the electric guitar and who is now expanding the boundaries of what the instrument can achieve.

Some people may find the majority of this material unlistenable or boring. I, in turn, might find those people to be unlistenable and boring. The more I hear and absorb these songs, the more I am able to find beauty in their construction, although they certainly require an open mind.

It’s true that minimalist tracks like “Crossing Casco Bay” and “Management Confidential” may sound like simple waves of feedback that never develop into anything that could even be called music, but there are also songs like “That Same Dream Again” which brings glitchy noise loops and percussion together to create a halfway accessible, if rather eerie, rock tune, or “Where Do Things Stand”, which almost seems to take the rhythm section from Filter’s “Hey Man Nice Shot” and attack it with bursts of guitar fuzz.

Distortion Is Truth contains 16 different compositions covering a number of different sounds and styles, which detracts from the album’s cohesiveness but ensures that the listener stays interested with short, varied doses. Crossing Casco Bay, on the other hand, contains only 5 songs, two of which are 20 minute minimalist excursions that are a little bit harder to appreciate. Crossing Casco Bay also contains one of my favourite tracks however: “Theme For An Imaginary Car Commercial” with whirring bleeps and chirps put to a danceable synthetic drumbeat.

It’s tough to compare Robert Poss’ work to anything else being done today, but I am pretty sure that fans of Sonic Youth will fall in love with this, as will (I’m guessing) followers of Band Of Susans and generally a lot of stuff on Touch & Go Records. If you’re looking for some challenging experimental and improvisational music that is the complete opposite of what you might hear on the radio at any given time, then look up Robert Poss. It’s might be just what the doctor ordered. — Sean