Moonshake

Moonshake were a British band formed in 1991 by songwriters Dave Callahan and Margaret Fiedler (raised in Chicago), who also embodied the two souls of their music: atmospheric and conversational in the former’s case, experimental and poetic in the latter’s. The duo was able to afford their stylistic sparring thanks to an outstanding rhythm section - imaginative and deafening, creative and loose—as if they were Wobble and Bruford (bassist John Frenett and drummer Mig). From the outset, Moonshake established themselves as one of the few bands capable of carrying forward the legacy of revolutionary groups such as Pere Ubu, Pop Group and Rip Rig & Panic, bands that disintegrated the rock song form into a mere plasma of sounds inspired by apparently mad rhythms and melodies. By deliberately slowing down the operation (since the era no longer has punk neurosis) and taking up a dictionary of black genres, Moonshake carried out a similar operation.

The band debuted with the EP Secondhand Clothes (Too Pure, 1992). While the harmonic foundation was shoegazing-style guitar work in the vein of My Bloody Valentine, Callahan already stood out with dub experiments (Blister) and jazz experiments (Drop In The Ocean).

Continuing in that direction, the album Eva Luna (Too Pure, 1992) proposed a singular (and brutal) synthesis of psychedelia, funk, rap, and jazz, ideally updating Public Image Ltd’s deconstructed dance-rock for the sampling era. Instruments are played as if they were loops. Rhythms seem to evoke a continuous delirium. This is especially evident in the percussion work, dissonances, and free-jazz solos of Wonderlust, a track which, in its apparent simplicity, actually conceals a complexity never achieved by Lydon. The frenetic abandon and hallucinatory atmosphere of Bleach & Salt Water are emblematic of this complex and monolithic sound, yet one that is almost always kept subdued.
Jazz-rock and improvisation are inevitably its pillars, both in the absurdist Lounge Lizards version (Tar Baby) and in the “industrial” This Heat version (Little Thing). But behind the curtain one can also glimpse the silhouettes of King Crimson, Soft Machine, Nucleus, and Zappa. The only exception, chaotic and deafening, is Spaceship Earth.
Then there are the dub ballads, which show similarities with P.I.L.: Seen & Not Heard, the highly syncopated Beautiful Pigeon (also released as a single), and the catchy City Poison.
The album reveals one of the most difficult and daring forms of intellectual rock. Moonshake’s only flaw is an excess of talent. The band has created an atmospheric dance music that is the musical equivalent of cinematic “noir.”

Fiedler instead dominates the mini-album Big Good Angel (Too Pure, 1993). Girly Loop, Two Trains and Flow feature consistently overwhelming and fascinating rhythms. Fiedler expands her arsenal of loops, samples, and ambient drones, overshadowing her partner. Not surprisingly, she left soon after to form Laika, accompanied by Frenett and producer Guy Fixsen (who had been a sort of fifth member of the band).

The Sound Your Eyes Can Follow (Too Pure, 1994), an album strictly performed without guitars, was born at the crossroads between the hysterical dub bass variant favored by Pere Ubu (Just A Working Girl) and the neurotic funk variant favored by the Contortions (the title track), all seasoned with jazz flavors (Your Last Friend In This Town, We're Making War) and blues (The Grind). Callahan puts down the guitar in favor of the sampler, and replaces his partner with a roster of guest musicians. The saxophone thus becomes the leading melodic instrument. Perhaps too programmatic, or too dense in sound, the album feels more like a personal nightmare than a public manifesto.

On Dirty & Divine (C/Z, 1996) the group’s singular stylistic mixture revolves more than ever around Matt Brewer’s dub rumble (often echoing Jah Wobble), Michael Rother’s rhythmic vertigo (pirouetting between percussion and drums like a jazz musician), and Raymond Dickaty’s anemic brass fanfares (guitars are still absent). The alienated tone of Exotic Siren Song shows how much charm has been lost in this process of hardening the sound: it feels like a hybrid of Talking Heads and B-52’s. Callahan’s more or less soulful laments mostly sound predictable, including the hypnotic Taboo (obtained by slowing down the Doors’ Soul Kitchen), which closes the album in a celestial apotheosis of harp tones. The main attractions are the “jungle-like” way in which samples overlap, producing eccentric arrangements (House On Fire). The psychedelic vein paints a few nerve-wracking temporal suspensions (Aqualisa), and the brass chatter colors some twisted funky digressions (Gambler’s Blues). An exit is glimpsed when the polyrhythms become sinister and mysterious and the horns trace languidly exotic figures, bringing some tracks (Nothing But Time) to the threshold of Jon Hassell’s “Fourth World.”