Minimal
Man's first album -- murky, moody, aggressive -- more than lived up to the
mysterious cover art Patrick Miller created, featuring a blank-faced mask
against a dark void. Audiences used to the focused precision of industrial
music as it evolved in later years might find what's created here a bit
unfocused -- not to mention lo-fi, with Miller's voice often sounding like it
was recorded one room over. Yet in the context of such fellow Bay Area
travelers as Chrome and N.Y.C. contemporaries Suicide, Miller's art made
perfect sense, alien and unsettled, balancing drones, cut-ups, and keyboard
noises ("The Shroud" is an almost perfect example of all three) with
often extreme vocals. The punk inspirations that Miller felt translated
themselves more into the lyrics than anything else, but musically things are
far less straitjacketed. While Miller is clearly the dominant spirit on the
album, he often sounds like a participant in something larger than himself,
guesting in often increasingly manic songs. In turn, said songs are often quite
short, packing in all kinds of musical psychosis in short spaces, like the
two-minute-long "High Why," the near equally short clangor and
stentorian crawl of "Hospital," and the pulsing moans and heavy distortion
on "You Are." The swooping drones over Andrew Baumer's ominous
bassline on "Two People" are suddenly halted by a sax squeal and
Miller's burst of screaming, but in contrast much of "Now I Want It
All" is almost power pop of a sort, unexpectedly anthemic while still very
much in keeping with the album's uneasy feeling. Boutique's reissue, once again
in keeping with the label's general philosophy, adds not only fine artwork and
notes but bonus tracks, mostly from the "Two Little Skeletons" and
"He Who Falls" singles, as well as the formerly compilation-only
"Shower Sequence." The latter -- at eight-plus minutes something of
an epic for Miller -- has him insisting through masses of reverb that he
"couldn't even hurt a fly," though the music and concluding screams
increasingly belie that claim.
Ned Raggett. AllMusic.com
