Back when Brooks — Andrew James Brooks — bedded down with Antony and
cut his cut "A Little Bit of Time," the enthusiasm for such was probably
limited to homo-masochists, bondage enthusiasts, and Nurse With Wound
devotees, an array of fans who're likely one and the same. Yet, with
the star of Saint Antony rising, having him on wax is like catching him
on the wax, rising into the night sky. And, so, it'd be no surprise if
even the venerable Magic & Accident empire — presided over by our hero
Herbert — took Brooks back to the production line and restickered
this here compact disc with a "featuring Antony of Antony & The
Johnsons" proclamation stuck on front. The New Boy George lends his
astonishing warbling to a song that says a lot about the record; Brooks
mixes a blunt beat that punches like a pen into packing foam, squeaky
circles of plasticky white breaking off as the thunk crumbles into
diffused digitalia with some pose(u)rly neo-classicism, draping the
dropped beat in faux flute, synth strings, and actual piano to match
Antony's vibrato-a-go-go counter-tenor before the boffin slices up the
diva-wailing into an oh-oh-oh that sounds suspiciously like a
recontextualization connotative of sexualised climax — before Brooks
pulls off all of such, arriving at a post-climax conclusion into which
his assorted bits break down into tiny pieces tossed in a
gale/gale-blow. The obvious comparison for such disco/not-disco electro
sampler-foolery is Drew Daniel's The Soft Pink Truth project; such a
comparative comes closer to home/homo when Brooks does something like,
oh, say, covering PJ Harvey's "Man-size" with a gay twist, showing
his Herbert-homie/Matmos-mate credentials by building the beats for such
entirely from the percussive sound of tissue boxes (this factuality
leading to a greater conceptual thought about hedonist representations
of gay culture, Brooks' thoughts like chin-scratching when contrasted to
Daniel's conceptual itch/ass-scratching). The big difference between
these Special Two is that TSPT is Daniel's place to play it straight
(well, so to speak), making the straight-(so-to-speak-)up-and-down
dancing music away from Matmos' sample science. Brooks, however,
happily makes music he doesn't think anyone can dance to; all his
excursions close to for-the-'floor rhythms are just a ruse, his
approximation of house's boom-tick or aping of Detroit minimalism never
lasting long enough to hit a rhythm and ride, Brooks e'er hankering to
yank the chain away, always jockeying sounds in and out with a swift
wrist, yearning for constant friction (and its subsequent heat), tossing
off rhythmic bits, then tossing in delicious twists as he goes on and
gets off. "Do the Math" is a song wholly symbolic of this ever-changing
equation, multiplying four and half minutes of frantic/staticky
Lidell-esque funk by Brooks's power of one, before suddenly adding eight
bars of eight-bit arcade game music that, in the bigger picture, almost
mock the regular presence of a "solo," the common denominator between
it and all here being a sense of quantifiable unease.
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