iDi* Amin- B.C.E. (By Defensive Listening)

Idi*Amin's debut cd, "B.C.E." is not just a cdr in a brown paper bag being passed around amongst local noise fans, but instead comes in a package that is beautifully illustrated and folds out like a wedding invitation. To package your average burnable cdr with such lavish visual presentation is a striking statement in itself. It's an insight into the philosophy of a group that may have recorded part of their record on the roof of Cool Bean's, but present it with all the attention and respect that they feel such an experiment (and the people that purchase it) deserve(s). I can respect that.

For a local band that is notoriously challenging, the album starts off with a misleadingly accessible tease. The first track, "GNU" churns along with some fairly melodic sax playing and comes off more like the score to a foreign film shot on DV. This is probably one of the weaker moments on the album, simply because I don't think the sax should be able to get away with playing what the band would probably find inappropriate on guitar if the roles were reversed, meaning that the sax part seems a little too light and safe in the context. Semblance to convention is quickly discarded, however, as the album moves on to"Carbide," its second piece, which sounds like an amplified rubber band being stretched across an empty warehouse by generator noise and random sax stabs. And once the third piece hits, all hell officially breaks loose, just like you thought it would. Here, Idi*Amin launch into a full on panic attack of abandon, with a dose of muscular drumming to help the sax and machine noise along to the middle of the record, which shifts into more lethargic territory. The guitars become so deconstructed and anti-riff at certain points that they would hardly be recognizable as the "chick magnets" young men once saw them as. Well, the dream is still alive for iDi* Amin if today's gals are into bleak, apocalyptic, and atonal nightmares.

The fifth track, "Coelacant" [sic], clocks in at nearly ten minutes and combines the aforementioned pieces ofIdi*Amin's sound with a great deal of feedback. By this point, the sine waves start to sound like lowflying warplanes as the ominous haze of the record builds ever outward and hits a true climax as the first track reprises, if you could call it that, with "G.N.U. II". Once Mike Forbes' sax starts it's repetitive Albert Ayler cadence, Idi*Amin's music really seems to come together almost gracefully. The guitars, drumming, and noise play off of these stunted phrases, and it's some of the most intriguing playing you'll hear from any local band. The next to last song, "Ziggurat" starts off with the same pattern, and if I had any power to change DFW's shitty rock history, this would replace"Possum Kingdom" as our most widely known local hit. The record ends with a lone scream, stray gunfire percussion, and the trickle of a slide running up and down the strings of a guitar and promptly dying, shortly after playing the album's only recognizable guitar melody. Along with the rest of the record, this piece is so menacing that I should probably correct my previous statement: "B.C.E." unfolds like a funeral invitation.

(Note: Star rating out of a possible five)