Aversion.com
From the Top of My Tree
The Bodies Obtained
Finding You Attractive Records
Fashions come and go, but gloom and doom is timeless. Or so says The Bodies Obtained, and after spinning From the Top of My Tree, you'll probably be inclined to agree. The band's debut album is a giant dark cloud that encompasses everything from late-'70s post-punk to avant-garde electronics to industrial noir, somehow checking all those milestones without losing itself in any put-on nostalgia trips.
The Detroit band conceived From the Top of My Tree as a truly timeless effort that'd blend a bit of every artsy outfit over the past 30 years. Such attempts to unify the belts -- The Bodies Obtained somehow dabble with rock, various flavors electronica and art-rock all at once -- usually become too top-heavy before they even leave the gate and crumple inward under their own conceptual weight. Not so this time out.
The Bodies Obtained don't regurgitate the breadth of their record collection. They digest it. So while you're sure to hear everything from Cabaret Voltaire and Joy Division to Brian Eno and Genesis P-Orridge's various projects, none ever emerge from the thick, dark cloud that is The Bodies Obtained's music. They're there, but it's the Bodies' signature sound everywhere on this album.
And if that's just a little intense and gloomy, that's just the point. Crafting intense and sometimes uncomfortable soundscapes, The Bodies Obtained shows just why stark, low-lit arrangements don't phase out as styles change. "Let the Worm Seize the Day" minces matter-of-fact vocals with all the aloof snarl of Public Image Ltd.'s first album with abstract, dissociated melodies descended from Eno's most successful ventures. "Looking for More" roars with the same barely restrained fury as the vintage industrial of Throbbing Gristle, but sets off the terror with textures skimmed out of electro-pop moments. "Skin Stuck to Bone" is a grim and atonal dirge full of squawking, hyperactive synths while "Hear and Believe" seems stuck somewhere between the world of classic British industrial and glistening krautrock.
Gloom and doom is here to stay. The Bodies Obtained prove that: Even in an era of optimistic hope for change, the dingy and dismal sounds from the past strike a chord with listeners.
- Matt Schild
Aversion.com
Dead Plans
The Bodies Obtained
Finding You Attractive Records
With last year's From the Top of My Tree (review) (Finding You Attractive), The Bodies Obtained opened up a deep, deep drawer of vinyl pulled from across the experimental-rock spectrum and took little bits of each out for a test drive. On Dead Plans, the band's sound is equally timeless, referencing Einstürzende Neubauten, Joy Division, King Crimson and Cabaret Voltaire, but this time around, that pile of vinyl's been left in the summer sunshine to melt, jellify and run together. All the elements are there, theoretically, but you're going to need a spectrometer and a flame to really be able to see each one of them.
Where its predecessor strove to be a timeless album because of its decades-spanning upbringing, Dead Plans takes a different route. Instead of timeless, it's out of time. While still grisly and dark, The Bodies Obtained are no longer content to scrounge out of their record collections, even if they're a lot cooler than yours. They've officially digested those records, chewed them up, swallowed them and are ready with their own ideas.
Dead Plans comes across as either an album that's remarkably removed from rock's temporal continuum or remarkably cutting-edge and fresh. Only time can tell if the band's leading the pack or running off on its own lovable tangent. Either way, it doesn't change the makeup of this album. Cemented squarely in sinister synth-pop, the band bends and twists in a breeze only felt by the band. "Death From Above" commands the same lock-step machine-tooled rhythms and swooping electronic melodies that would have made it a staple of late '90s goth-club play, even though The Bodies Obtained never set out to become sonic boogeymen. "What's Done Is Done" pulls the shimmering, gossamer keyboards out of vintage Siouxsie and the Banshees and makes them fight for their life in a world of droning low ends and disjointed lead vocals. "The Perfect Plan" could have turned out as just another flawed attempt to find the perfect synth-pop song, but instead The Bodies Obtained take it through the looking glass for a skewed Wonderland world of giant hooks and shadowy melodies. "Baby, It's Not a Sin," is more pop goodness, as the band gets creepy without getting too caught up in its experimental vibe.
The Bodies Obtained are an enigma: Simeltaneously experimental and pop. If that paradox makes for some good talking points, it's not the essence of Dead Plans, which, almost magically, finds a way to make music solely on the Bodies' terms.
- Jennifer Doyle
Influences
King Crimson, Roxy Music, Suicide, Fad Gadget, East River Pipe
The Bodies Obtained
Dead Plans
Biography 2009
Label: Finding You Attractive
Release Date: September 8, 2009
RIYL: The Knife, A Place To Bury Strangers, Fad Gadget
“is a giant dark cloud that encompasses everything from late-‘70’s post-punk to avant-garde electronics to industrial noir, somehow checking all those milestones without losing itself in any put-on nostalgia trips” – Aversion.com
“listening to these guys is like listening to the Road Warrior soundtrack in a collision with the Blade Runner soundtrack mixed with a healthy dose of Suicide on tons of drugs. It’s crazy noisy jittery post punk that will rule your world” - PopStereo.blogspot.com
“have forged a unique world that isn’t for everyone, though a star gate for any fan of Eno, Throbbing Gristle, morbid fantasies, and the hours long after the sun goes down. Lay down your psychic noise” - ParasitesandSycophants.com
“like Vangelis Papathanassiou’s Blade Runner score and Tangerine Dream albums, TBO is a listening experience not unlike traveling through an alien landscape: strange and at times incredible” – Popwreckoning.com
“for anyone excited by minimal beats, broken synthesizers, digi-punk, or anything kind of atonal, TBO will be an amazing experience”. – Firstcoastnews.com
“True, The Bodies Obtained are intellectually challenging, and you sense a level of composition skill that can take these recluses into the electronic music stratosphere” – Ink 19.com
After the underground success of The Bodies Obtained’s first album From the Top of My Tree, the Detroit, MI electro band have decided to release their second LP, Dead Plans. Like the first chapter in the TBO saga, which garnered considerable buzz in the experimental electronic blogosphere, Dead Plans is a variation on a theme: bands like Suicide, The Pop Group, Fad Gadget and visionaries like Brian Eno are all sound checked on the record. From the twisted, distorted vocals of songs like “The Perfect Plan” to the slightly demented stomp of album closer “Riding a Dead Plan”. The songs are invariably and deliciously bizarre, recalling the twisted stories of the Residents in a pop format. Timeless yet contemporary, Dead Plans is a perfect bride between the experimental scenes of the past 25 years and the noise-pop bands that are fast on the rise in America and the UK.
Like From the Top of My Tree, Dead Plans makes its case by breaking new ground again and again. It’s like dance music for broken robots, love songs for masochists, and test tube babies created by musical mad scientists. Even a ballad like “Walking on My Head” hits you like Yaz’s Upstairs at Eric’s being computed by HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey right before he gets his plug pulled. Dead Plans is one of those records that knows how to use its dead space as much as the music itself: each track is perforated with little silences that give it just the right amount of uneasiness. When TBO sing “Please don’t leave me alone/Not tonight” on the mid-album track “What’s Done is Done”, you believe the desperation.
The Bodies Obtained are still refraining from performing live, keeping the mystique of the enigmatic duo alive. Other than the music, it’s where the strength of the project lies: even when listening to Dead Plans, you’re never quite sure where the next turn is going to take you. Melding the best parts of experimental rock, electronica, prog and Krautrock, you quickly learn to expect the unexpected. Even refusing to be photographed (instead using images of what has become something of a mascot to the band, a man with a gnarled tree for a head), TBO’s only connection with their fans is through their music—a medium in which they have total control and orchestration. Their determination to their aesthetic really is something to behold, and maybe sometimes in the future they will divulge more to the world, but for now, Dead Plans, their newest opus, is as close as we’re going to get to their wicked genius.
Album Tracklisting:
1. Death From Above
2. Baby, It’s Not A Sin
3. She Wants What She Wants
4. The Perfect Plan
5. Nothing But This
6. Home Away From Home
7. Walking On My Head
8. What’s Done Is Done
9. Any Man Will Do
10. Riding A Dean Plan
Information please contact: aj@thebodiesobtained.com
