the shroud of 12"
[1981, subterranean]

full disclosure: i have almost no interest in industrial music. while the san francisco based minimal man (founded by patrick miller) are credited as being one of the more influential bands when it came to narrowing the distance between punk rock and industrial, to me, they were far more than an industrial hybrid. at least at first. their debut release contained elements of cold wave, art rock, post-punk, new wave, avant-garde, experimental electronics as well as noise. it's elements of the latter, mixed with miller's lyrical misanthropy and paranoia that lent to the "industrial" sound, but honestly i think that minimal man's neighbors (and label mates) nervous gender were a better embodiment of the punk goes industrial ethos. there's also the fact that this album is the only one theirs that even sounds like that. their second full length, safari, took plenty of strides forward in terms of listenability; retaining the synth and electronics love, but (for the most part) losing the darkness and edge which made the shroud of such a unique and groundbreaking document. by the time that 1985's sex with god came out, that's when patrick miller would come to more wholeheartedly embrace industrial music... and the results mostly came across like shitty dance music for goths. slave lullabies was a marked improvement over that, doing a much better job of fusing at least the tone of their debut with the recent shift in artistic direction. when minimal man's last album, pure, was released, in 1988, all semblance of what this project was all about was shot to hell as that album mainly consisted of minimal electronic soundscapes. the shroud of may have helped bridge the gap between punk and industrial, but once this group crossed that bridge, they seemed to have burnt it.

the foundation of the band, initially, also included drummer lliam hart (pansy division) and saxophonist / bassist andrew baumer, but miller fancied the idea of the group being more of a musical collective and as such their debut record featured contributions from a myriad of artists: hitoshi sasaki, stephen wymore (pink section), stefano paolillo, michael belfer (sleepers, tuxedomoon), steven brown (tuxedomoon), michael fox (code of honor) and gary miles. interestingly enough, only this and slave lullabies would feature such an array of collaborators, though the band's core would alter with every release; to the best of my knowledge he never worked with one single musician on more than two albums.

as far as mood-setting opening tracks goes, loneliness is a glorious choice. after beginning with an excerpt of a man listing his depression related symptoms, sparse guitar chords, which sound like they're underwater, enter, soon to be joined by a slow drumbeat and moody synth atmospherics. miller carries that opening theme and runs with it, as evidenced by lines like "no one lives but me, shadows are my only friend, and ghosts are all i see". after spending the verse extolling the pros and cons of loneliness, as a condition and a concept, his (lyrical) hopelessness begins to grow in intensity, and so will the instruments, culminating in a chugging apex during the chorus, with patrick's frantic repeated insistence that "ronald reagan and i agree!". aside from just being an awesome song, to me it's also an encapsulation of the climate in the country at the time, and makes me feel faux-nostalgic, since i was like two at the time. the early 80's were a good time for fear.

two people is just... eerie madness, really, since there's not a whole lot of actual substance. the lyrics see our protagonist in the role of either a soothsayer or misanthropic god, spinning a little yarn about how two people in a car, who think they're going far (not sure if that's both literal and metaphorical, but both work), are really just going to die and he's the only one privy to this fact. the macabre subject matter is made more severe by the cold, mechanical music, consisting of random noises (blaring drones, blasting saxophone), the sudden falling out of the background music as well as shrieking vocals. what two people lacks in conventional songwriting, it more than makes up for in menace.

the storytelling structure will continue with high why. here miller recounts a tale about how he scored some drugs off the street and got high before a show. then he proceeds to rhetorically, and repeatedly, ask (yell) "why?" never answering, merely ruminating. at the very least it's a unique take on drug use since it serves as a counterbalance to the glorification of narcotics in music. since his story is left unresolved, it's the bouncing bassline and rubbery guitar chords which ultimately leave a lasting impression on the listener.

after beginning the album with something resembling a normal song, minimal man has been moving further away from the standard verse/chorus/verse pattern ever since. while that could be a risky move, in terms of holding people's interest, patrick miller's brand of nihilism actually seems to thrive more once it's freed from the shackles of convention; hospital is proof positive of that fact. this time he'll go in a different direction with the vocals, adopting a stutter to some words and repeating others for emphasis, definitely not as straight forward. now, due to his delivery, i can't fully grasp the song's meaning, but combining the dark lurch of the music with shouted lyrics such as "she's going to be in the hospital a long long long time!" one can assume it isn't anything sweet. i may not be able to get the gist of what's going on, but there is a good lyrical payoff (which is rather lacking in other songs). one of the things that patrick says a few times in the song's duration is "knowing fully well anything she found would always be mine", he'll follow up that thought just before the song ends with the multi-tracked whisper of "and she found the worms crawling out of her", which was a wonderfully fucking creepy way to end this song.

blue step is easily the album's noisiest track, and it's also one of the best. the highlight here is a great submerged guitar line which is often buried underneath a variety of noisy add-ons. without that grounding guitar it seems like blue step would just collapse from the sheer chaos surrounding it.

the appropriately titled hatemonger (the song ends with the repeating of "fucking little whore!") once again features a very strong musical foundation; a repetitious, affected guitar chug, which alternates between two particular tones. the relative monotony of it is broken up by another guitar, with its piercing siren-like wails and miller's fractured vocals will match the buoyant quality of the instruments to terrific effect.

following that rousing three song high the album's quasi-titular centerpiece, the shroud, will cool things down considerably. it consists of waves of layered ambient drones, disturbed only somewhat by subdued meandering synth clatter.
now i want it all stands out not only for being one of the scant normal songs on the record, but for the fact that it's actually upbeat to the point of being poppy. considering how things had been progressing up to now, it's pretty jarring. its airy synth melody will pair nicely with that of the distorted guitar and miller will (legitimately) sing, betraying the talk/shouting dynamic which had been commonplace. with that said, it's not all good times as the song's mid-section corrodes into droning guitar clamor, ambient synthesizer sounds, eerie whispers and a nice undercurrent of electronic noise. after that tumult, now i want it all picks up where it left off.

there's a good sparse vibe to the hex of sex, with its slight tribalesque percussion and a memorable anchoring bassline as its rhythmic counterpart. that'll be fleshed out by formless guitar and droning which differs in each stereo channel. lyrically, miller begins by saying how he thinks of all the disgusting animalistic things he used to do with an ex when he's lonely, making sex seem contemptible, he'll then build on that by stating that since the beginning of man, everyone has wanted just one thing, sex, and that word is issued with more than just a tinge of vitriol. fucking may be an instinctual act to him, but not one that he seems too proud to be engaging in.

the duality of minimal man will rear its head once more in you are. the lyrics are essentially an ode to someone he considers dear to him, "you are my friend, you're special to me, you're the one i love", the problem is that the music is so tense and unfeeling that the sentiment comes across as condescension. this actually makes the sappy lyrics much more tolerable. the music revolves around what sounds like a distorted alarm going off, which is joined by feedback and understated guitar noise.

miller retreats back to his lonely place in i don't resist. at this point he seems unburdened and resigned to just letting loneliness consume him, basically offering himself to it with his shouts of "i don't... resist!" there's a strong melancholic guitar melody at resist's core which is haunted by the darker bass chords and atmospheric industrial synth noise.

for having such a natural sounding title, jungle song is ardently inorganic. the no-frills drum machine beat in tandem with the main synthesized melody (two consecutive high-pitch tones followed by a mid) fit congruently with the patrick's theme; once more, though more obvoiusly this time, he will cast himself in the role of creator. now he's singing about how "nice" it is that so many different people (and animals) can coexist in "the same device", linking the mechanical quality of the music with the lyrics. the pauses that are used to separate each statement create a fragmentary format which is impactful in this setting. jungle song, which is (musically) catchy and upbeat, is oddly optimistic, without being backhandedly so, definitely a rarity.

it would have been a little too neat or easy to end the album with the last track, so instead it draws to conclusion with she was a visitor. lacking any ear-catching components, it's best when viewed merely as an outro (despite the fact that it's nearly four minutes long). the lyrics won't extend beyond the plaintively spoken title of the song and they're issued atop pulsing synth tones which are broken up by grim guitar riffs, rudimentary drumming and saxophone that just drifts along in the background. the vocals will gradually rise in amplitude and become increasingly affected by a delay pedal. it's not a bummer or anything, just a bit of a milquetoast ending.

the shroud of may be a (mostly) bleak journey, but it is a highly rewarding one, aurally. seeing as how there's a great deal of emphasis placed on experimentation, specifically with regards to the lyrical aspect of songwriting, it was imperative that the music portion be strong enough to sustain repeated listens, and that was certainly the case here. the moodiness that arose through the group's melding of (restrained) noise, synth atmospherics and post-punk sounding guitars paired remarkably well with patrick miller's ravings. his lyrics, which at times seem improvised, offer the listener a voyeuristic glimpse at the uglier side of the human condition. in short, this is feel good music, since your life probably isn't as shitty as he made his out to be and that's something to feel good about.

download

blue step