Karate - 595
I feel bemusement brought on by oddly formed expectations.
As you can hear above, Karate is thirty-five percent from Phish towards Fugazi. Well, Fugazi at the time of The Argument. This makes them a pretty interesting band. Built to Spill has guitar playing, but only within the rock genre. Tortoise plays a sort of jazz/indie hybrid, which is how people label Karate, but Tortoise’s wordless, mathematically intriguing, rhythmic compositions disqualify them as purveyors of popular music. In terms of songwriting and attitude if not guitar pyrotechnics Karate actually sounds quite like The Sea and Cake.
Karate is the power trio version of the Sea and Cake.
Now, the thing is, I know of Karate mostly through Tape Op Magazine. Actually, audio device reviewer Andy Hong recorded all of Karate’s studio albums. Aha, here is where the expectations are formed, you say.
Well, counter-expectations. If there is one band which Tape Op editor Larry Crane has famously pilloried, decried, and shamed at every opportunity, it is Steely Dan. And if there is one band that is known for playing jazz-rock fusion with intricate songs and awesome guitar playing, it is Steely Dan.
Of course, and rightly so, the Tape Op people deride not their music per se, as much as their album-making process. The overly mannered, spend-three-weeks-tuning-the-snare-drum, hire-outrageously-talented-and-expensive-session-musicians, hyphenated approach is the antithesis of the “Tape Op aesthetic” of making do, doing it yourself, and just doing it.
So it’s an ends and means question. A sane person does not believe ends justify means. On the other hand, I have made a practice of considering the object, the work, rather than the circumstances of its creation. That is a pillar of the St. John’s College education which I continue to value.
Karate shows that all of Steely Dan’s labor and belaboring was unnecessary, but in the end, all that exists is a piece of sound, which must be judged on its own merits.
Hmm.
1 year ago
