Album Review: Locean - Top Ten Zen Meditations
Reviewed by Dan Barnes
There is a story told of a celebrated Russian ballet dancer who was asked what she meant by a certain dance. Her answer was to point out that if she were able to say it in words there would be no reason to go to the trouble of dancing it.
A statement on the obscurity of art, certainly, but also very much the way I feel when attempting to make any judgement of Locean’s new album, Top Ten Zen Meditations. To even try to write down what is going on with this record would be folly from the outset, as words would not suffice to describe the kaleidoscopic nature of the music.
From the get-go, Top Ten Zen Meditations is a dissonant trek through an unfamiliar musical landscape, though you have an inclining you may have passed this way before. There is something of the post-reformation Swans about Locean, something slightly Sonic Youth and maybe just a pinch of Portishead.
But that’s just me trying to anchor my listening experience in the familiar. Early tracks Coca Cola, Clicking Fingers and Sprruce Bingsteen are experimental meditations in which a rhythm section keeps time and other instrumentation pay fleeting visits. Deliberately trippy in nature, the waves of sound revel in the spaces between the music, making for a sometimes uncomfortable listening experience, as you wait for a resolution that never arrives.
In many ways Top Ten Zen Meditations is a record of two halves. For all the psychedelic, Lynchian-soundtrack of the first four tracks, the album moved onto a more recognisably melodic footing. Lauren Bolger’s vocals have a Beth Gibbons quality to them throughout and, during Officer, her words take on an almost post-human feel as the song, which began with gentle guitar lines over a sweet-sounding cymbal, sees that guitar become increasingly urgent as it spirals upwards.
Looking for Melody feels as though a tongue was planted firmly in a cheek when coming up with that title as it jams out a bluesy riff to the point of collapsing in on itself.
There’s nothing easy in listening to Locean’s latest but no one said art needs to be easy. Top Ten Zen Meditations is seventy-one minutes of challenging free-form experimentation that may well have a foot in both camps when it comes to genius and lunacy.
Like the Russian dancer commented, to try to come to any explanation as to what this record is about and be able to write it down would render the playing of it pointless. Instead, Top Ten Zen Meditations is a trip you have to take yourself as only you will know what you’ll find when out there.
