Fasciinatiion＜Opaque Blue Vinyl＞

コナー・オバースト (ブライト・アイズ)も在籍していたネブラスカ州オマハで結成されたインディー / ポストパンク・バンド、ザ・フェイント 。2008年にリリースされた5THスタジオ・アルバム『FASCIINATIION』がLPリイシュー!作曲、レコーディング、プロデュース、アートディレクション、リリースまですべて自分たちで行った作品。バンドの成熟ぶりと更に完成度を増した切れキレのエレクトロニック・ポストパンク / ダンスパンク・サウンドが全編に渡って炸裂しています!

After a four-year break that involved building their own recording studio and setting up their own label, Blank.Wav, the Faint return with Fasciinatiion, a set of songs that are as ambitious as they are sleek -- and tweaked: "I might distort myself a bit," Todd Fink sings on "Mirror Error," but that's an understatement. Virtually any sound that can be altered or augmented on the album has been, illustrating the blurring of man and machine that is one of Fasciinatiion's major themes. On "Forever Growing Centipedes," fuzzed-out beats and keyboards zap and twitch like they're attached to electrodes, while "The Geeks Were Right"'s chunky bassline gives the song's dystopian rock an electro-inspired backbone. While Wet from Birth's symphonic flourishes have been pruned, Fasciinatiion is just as ambitious as its predecessor, spinning cautionary tales about science, surveillance, and pop culture sleaze and setting them to kinetic, self-consciously synthetic backdrops. This love-hate relationship with technology is the cleverest thing about the album -- at least in theory. In practice, Fasciinatiion is almost as much of a mixed bag as Wet from Birth was; songs like "A Battle Hymn for Children" take the album's themes in overwrought directions. Other tracks have interesting concepts but don't do much musically, such as the tense childhood memories of "Fulcrum and Lever" and "I Treat You Wrong," which dissects a manipulative relationship with the clinical distance of an autopsy. On the other hand, "Fish in a Womb"'s squirm-inducing words ("That slice in my neck, it's oozing jelly clear as glass") detract from the song's subtly pretty melody and arrangement. The Faint's pop skills match their conceptual ambition more than a few times, however: "Machine in the Ghost" and "Mirror Error" are bouncy and spare, with skeletal rhythms just strong enough to support their surprisingly sweet melodies. "Psycho," the album's most overtly playful track, resembles a slowed-down Brainiac song with its squeaking synths and rubbery guitars, and "Get Seduced"'s pop culture tirade comes attached to some of the band's most nagging hooks. Fasciinatiion clicks enough of the time to make it a step forward from Wet from Birth, and despite its unevenness, at times it can be fasciinatiing. ~ Heather Phares

最近ではナイン・インチ・ネイルズのリミックスも手掛けていたフェイントが、自主レーベルを立ち上げて4年ぶりに新作をリリースした。次々とスタイルを変化させている他のポスト・パンク・リヴァイヴァル勢を横目に、相変わらずのブリーピーなサウンドを披露。シニカルで有機的なテクスチャーは殺傷力を増していて、とりわけダウンテンポなナンバーでその威力を発揮している。ライヴで聴いたらブッ飛ばされそう!
bounce (C)平塚 望