I thought I'd investigate a few of the weirder albums for a few days this week, this track is off 1997's Levitate, which was marked out as the album made just after Brix had left and long-term drummer Simon Wolstencroft had quit before the end of making.
Song: Everybody But Myself
Album: Levitate
Year: 1997
This track has a very strange start to it, what sounds like Mark at a gig, being heckled, or perhaps a practice room attempt at the song with some freestyling lyrics, falling straight into a cleaner-sounding studio version that has Nagle's keyboards pushed up over everything else, including the vocals, as a result, it sounds a bit club-ish, dance beats and some trebly keyboard fumblings make up most of the melody while for the rest of the song, the title is repeated over and over.
This sounds to me like a defiant stand that can either sound triumphant or fall flat on its face, the start is the sound of an irritable MES but its a great little snippet of real sound, I'm still in two minds as to whether its a gig or simply a mess of multi-tracked vocals as there seems to be a few vocal tracks running on top of each other all over the track, the half-mumbled 'backing vocals' he seems to give himself now and again suggest it could be manufactured and I really shouldn't be surprised that he has allowed lo-fi recording onto the album.
I'd be interested to know what people think of this album, given that it was recorded in such a fraught period and the music is even more basic than usual. Do please comment if you have anything to add, this track has stumped me frankly!
The combination of post-rave inspirations and the void of space he has given himself here may well be designed to confuse the listener, it certainly has me this time. The cover to this album is equally disturbing an early attempt at Photoshop skills when it first came out no doubt, but the masked face on the front is still menacing, kudos to MES, this is one of the most unnerving albums I've heard in the Fall canon.
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