WON JAMES
WON – the hollow grail
(CD,
r.a.i.g.)
Won James Won demand a lot from their listeners.
Probably they do not care at all about their listeners, but just put their
demands up high because, it is just like it is. They fill this album, their
fifth one, up to the brim with short and not so short attacks to the
eardrums and the mind of the listener. And all they offer is a “hollow
grail”. No wonder, their core family from father to baby kid is dressed in
black latex all over. Actually, the overripeness and productivity of Won
James Won does not come from sick minds that are out to destroy whatever
comes up to them, but rather from the sickness that forms within the
cooperating minds of people in a certain aspect and mood of life. Because
Won James Won are not a noise-core band with weird ideas like all those
other ones are.
They are a collective of people writing and performing
in various constellations and various places, improvising noise rock pieces
and avantgarde noise tracks, from nothing. Picking from round of over a
dozen people, some of them core members, some of them probably less in the
core, they just record and produce and produce and record, what comes
necessary. Or apparent.
The result is stunning and stupefying. Sometimes you
will shake your head in wonder, at other times you won’t dare to opt their
way and then you won’t help but pucker your head in time with their
attack. Some tracks are more basic powertrio noise rock, others sound like a
noise rock band cooperating with some electronic noise wizard and others are
ambient pieces that range in atmosphere from early Cabaret Voltaire to late
Techno Animal. Sometimes they just know how to rawk. Most of it is
completely crazy and always a little out of hand as well. Won James Won
might be people you’d like to party with, but you would try to stay close
to the door, in case the party becomes to, uhm, rough. Or you start to find
their sense of humour too weird and you think the situation might be getting
out of hand soon. That’s when Won James Won start to warm up.
It is hard to find out what the masterplan behind this
band really is. Sampling Boris Vian and Kurt Schwitters does give away a
certain artistical and ideological inclination, but I find it hard to argue
that they are a 21st century version of dadaism dressed in noise
core. Though reading it back again, I do find that it sounds good,
nevertheless I don’t trust that it is completely true. The avantgarde in
many ways still refers to artists that worked almost a century ago, which
shows two things: the enormous influence and longevity of these ideas, and
the necessity to keep these ideas alive. Russia is such a big monumental
nation and still so strange and alien to so many people, that visiting the
country and meeting the people is still an adventure in many ways. Music is
an ambassador this way, with Won James Won giving two messages: there is
something besides Wodka-drinking and the secret police in Russia, and the
other message being: better be careful, because you don’t know if that
thing besides is not even more dangerous.
