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BANDS: Punk
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Chevreuil:
Sport
In the time that I’ve spent writing for Left off the Dial, I’ve had to review a number of releases that weren’t necessarily my cup of tea. Because of this, I’ve made it my prerogative to separate my aesthetics from my logic. I do my best to provide an objective view of how well the band accomplishes what they set out to do, whether or not it’s something I care about. Since my musical taste is ridiculously broad and varied, I am able to review 99.8% of the music I hear with a certain degree understanding, if not appreciation. That is why I am very sorry to say that I am hard pressed to find anything nice to say about Chevreuil. Sport was originally released in Paris in 2000 and is now available in North America for the first time courtesy of Chicago’s Sick Room Records. The record contains the following: guitar distorted by four different types of amps, and drums. That’s it. It’s an experimental record designed with the hope of being played for background noise. It’s the kind of thing you would throw on while cooking or repairing the bike. That would be fine and dandy, if only the guitar riffs were vaguely interesting or the drumming were not so sloppy. The problem I have with the majority of these tracks is that it doesn’t sound like any love went into them. They seem to be almost randomly thrown together without any sense of direction or purpose. In fact, the noise only seems to gel into melody on two songs: “Battiston” and “College.” Even on those two, the rhythm is far too monotonous to be enjoyable. After this continues for nine tracks, the closing number (unless you count the “bonus track”) is followed literally by ten minutes of absolute silence. And that was the only part of the album I enjoyed. I have a great respect for experimental music, because it grants the artist creative license to venture into unexplored realms of sound or technique. However, “Experimentation” doesn’t mean scraping unused chords off the floor, throwing them in a wastebasket, and calling the wastebasket an album.
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