Steven Brown
's third album away from
Tuxedomoon
is strange, out of immediate contact with its time and place, almost willfully obscure at points -- and all the better for it.
Searching for Contact
makes for one strange and wonderful late-'80s album, with perhaps only the contemporaneous work of
Foetus
and
Marc Almond
being the nearest parallels, mashing a slew of ideas --
big band
blasts,
industrial
-crawl beats, dark arrangements, and singing with brooding passion -- into an often striking combination. Generally the emphasis is on quieter rather than louder music, though when
Brown
and company turn up the heat, as with the striking opener
"Habit,"
it can be quite gripping.
's sense of theatricality almost literally manifests itself at points --
"Doe's Day"
finds him acting the MC for a nonexistent theater show, while a three-part song sequence is literally described as a series of 'scenes,' concluding with a bemusing dialogue -- while other performances are less sung lyrics than spoken word
poetry
of sorts. The emphasis lies with the music first and foremost, though; even the part satire/part reflection of
"In Praise of Money"
gets its power mostly from the mournful yet busy backing. His less confrontational moments can linger the longest in memory --
"Audiences and Stages"
(once more continuing the theme of theater), brief but beautiful, has
in best crooner mode over low, murky music, while the tenser drama of
"This Land,"
with
matched by a driving though mixed low piano line, and the brief demi-beer hall
singalong
/buried
electronic
noise
combination of
"De Hamburger Veermaster"
also stand out.
LTM
's reissue in 2004, once again sticking to the label's philosophy of providing more for one's money, adds seven bonus tracks, including the entirety of the
Me and You and the Licorice Stick
EP, as well as the single version of
"Last Rendezvous."
~ Ned Raggett