THE SILVER SCENE
ABSENT EXPRESSION REVIEWED
IT HAD TO HAPPEN! It's been some years now since the impact of experimental music first rebounded to the contemporary in a new-old sound as fresh and vibrant as the Velvets, the Krautrockers and Sonic Youth.
The Austin and Oakland experimental rock and electronic music scenes, and the American renaissance they predicated, have soared and muddled to hiatus positions of equal entrenchment. There are now great bands and artists everywhere. Somehow there's a pervasive feeling that in the 2020s we are in a slack period between mass cultural eruptions.
Meanwhile, however, the combined accomplishments of Austin and Oakland bands have been seeded in places far from both, and some of those seeds are coming to the most refreshing blooms heard in the Euroethnic world since Molly took all those pages just to say "Yes oh yes I will." And the first with the mostest bloom is in one of the seeming-unlikeliest, most stuck in a rut, the very heart of the cold emotionless sensibility most antithetical to the spirit of rock: the dead East Coast.
But kids are seething clear round the country, and they are no exception, and rock has in its aluminum evolution expanded to encompass more than mere good-vibes (all the darkest impulses of the human soul, in fact), so maybe it's not so shocking that the chilly domains of burned witches and headless horsemen have kindled within The Silver Scene as healthy and instinctive in its understanding of learned styles as Britain's Beatbrats were toward American R&B once upon a time.
The stage has long been waiting for an East Coast re-entry, something really weird and woolly. After all, the Yanks are always noted for their mechanistic thinking and fondness for romanticizing despondency. The Velvet Underground was wowing ‘em by exploiting similar neuroses in their sound and aesthetics, and later Sonic Youth would come along and blow everybody out with a lead guitarist's fondness for Lou Reed's METAL MACHINE MUSIC, so why hasn't similar fresh work been pouring out of that part of the country ever since? Did the East Coasters throw in the towel when Mac DeMarco moved to L.A.?
Well, the answer is that they didn't. There has been some real killer rock and avant-garde aborning in the drafty sound laboratories of certain gentrified neighborhoods of that part of the country, but the trouble was that the only initial exposure the rest of the country had was through albums by bands imitating popular Brooklyn and Philly sounds in the lamest possible way. Ah, it's been years since they came out now, and who remembers the A Sunny Day In Glasgow, who sounded like a still-wet collage formed of Dee-Lite and half-assed shoegaze, or Lachane, who did the most perfect clown makeup parody of Nico I've ever heard, or Cigarettes After Sex, who sounded like the Cowboy Junkies actually hit their mainlines and recorded wading through a wall of asbestos?? Who remembers all those losers? Nobody, and justly so, except me, and I had to research them out of a review I wrote myself and forgot in a back issue of That Bush is Not Burning.
But not to worry, ‘cause there is a new sound in the winds off the Bay and the East River! One such example is the great, great, marvelous Andy Heck, who has over 30 albums out and deserves to be unleashed on America. I don't have time to tell you much about him, except to say that he's been much influenced by the voice of Satan, and the name of his latest release, Snoopy is Dead, which is made up of themes composed by Andy for avant-garde underground movies which were never released or perhaps never even made.
Part Two: "Are you on an acid trip?"
But the real payload in the nascent glorious history of East Coast rock lies in the work of The Silver Scene, an art rock project commandeered by Ethan Theme, a native of The Commonwealth of Massachusetts (as it officially can be called, THE MAKE IT YOURS STATE (and Ethan *does* make it his, as you can hear), and more recently the trash heap of my people: New York. The Silver Scene's 2020 debut Absent Expression is currently one of the smartest bounties of music which lies outside of the drippy-plucky guitar pabulum of East Coast hot off the Mac mimeograph.
Before proceeding to a critical consideration of his
The interview is a classic of total noncommunication and inexpression. The first question the doorknob asks is, "Are you on acid?" "No," replies, Ethan Theme, "At some point, acid broke up with me." Which sort of sets the tone for the whole conversation. The second query posed by the klutz is, naturally, 'Where did you get your name?'
Well, I'd wondered about that one, and the reply is interesting. "Silver is my favorite color," says Ethan, "And what about Scene?" butts in the blurting asshole, just as Ethan pops the collar of his jacket, and stretches to show his silver, fake YSL boots.
"So, The Silver Scene,” Ethan kicks the journalist in the shin with striking force. The asshat of a critic lowers his gaze and hand to soothe the sudden shin pain, when The Silver Scene's frontman spits on poor dorko's head. He points to the color of his boots, and continues. “And Scene was a subculture, a technicolored brand of mall goth. They wore brightly-colored clothing, such as graphic tees, spraypaint-tight skinny jeans, neon makeup, and a healthy juxtaposition of silver studded belts, chokers and cuffs. It was invented in Russia to predicate the 2016 election and very popular in America."
Now that that's all clear, we can get to the matter of the project itself and its internal message. Because The Silver Scene definitely has one, and its main-man regards it with certain defensiveness. Ethan Theme impassively emailed me the statement which says:
"The Silver Scene is an art rock project from the East Coast. Absent Expression, as a title, is one-half a joke about saying nothing at all. People like to make big statements with their debuts. I like to make vague statements. The other one-half relates to someone I used to date. She liked abstract expressionism.”
That is, The Silver Scene, are an organic expression of certain young people learning, as their peers all over the world are, to relate to themselves and their own freedom in totally new ways, to translate that freedom into a new free music like nothing heard on the planet heretofore, and to totally oppose anyone or anything that stands in the way of the attainment and ongoing sensation of that freedom.
If that sounds a bit like the kids in the 1970s who refused to return METAL MACHINE MUSIC, like, it's only natural, because The Silver Scene probably come out of an environment just about as oppressive as that abstain. The difference is that The Silver Scene are the direct representatives of ZERO party or faction, disdaining all boards, syndicates and governments of the earth. And their rebellion is totally understandable as the healthy human response to themselves and their situation: "Everybody has to make their own experience," says Ethan Theme to the interviewer's wheedlings about “what-gives-you-the-right-to-complain-if-you-don't-have-a-better-plan.”
“Of course it needs to have a little bit of glam to it. Whoever makes the mark in code as The Silver Scene decides what it wants. We try to express that with the music."
In the process of that, I'm hellbent on making The Silver Scene become the most publicised and controversial group in blank Manhattan right now, and by way of clarifying and defining myself to both friend and foe, I will tell you about myself, and what I see in The Silver Scene and relate to.
Part Three: What We Were
“I am nothing more than my current mood.” — Ethan Theme
Already during my teen years, a path began to emerge. In order to reconcile a society I felt out of place in during that time, I saw in music the freedom to develop and further continue new forms of communication.
It was evident that I could not let myself be pushed into any kind of "9-5" career. From analysing the repression mechanisms within this structure, I had already learned how to react against this system surrounding me on the outside. With this knowledge, it was clear that – contrary to my parents – I had to completely redefine myself. For example, like, I don't smoke pot, the main intoxicant of society; I wanted to offer what I had experienced through conscious, eye-opening situations.
A sense of looking back at familial and historical roots became possible for me. First in a profoundly new way of living. I can truly articulate basic criticism against the existing system because I have created a model of the counter-society with music.
Theoretically, I've had to react against the intolerance of my affluent, academic parents, homeowners, and neighbors, who know how to communicate with us only through the formats such as music, visual arts, and clothing.
Discussing these life experiences is where the doorknob journalist, who has been me this whole time, finally clicked with Ethan Theme and his Silver Scene.
What The Silver Scene Wants
“I like intangible things. And silver things"
“In most ways I know exactly what I want; it's so important to tell yourself what you want. Others don't need to know.”
It is partially the latest edition of the great utopian communist dream of a better world and purer human integration, partially the rather defensive response to the abuse heaped on them by the bizarre journalist disguised in an M65 parka, yes, Establishment and uncomprehending nerds such as their interviewer. Sometimes you don't learn to define a particular cultural or artistic situation as political until you're right in the thick of the shit-gale of contention. And while some of The Silvers' positions may seem a bit abstract even to members of their own generation – for instance, that bit about booze is short sighted if not positively reactionary at this stage in history, when the finest alternative to psychedelic strychnine or stuporous self-pollution is a charmin' snort of vitamin and I am writing this with a pint of my brother's hip Williamsburg homebrew kombucha sitting not six inches from my 2020 iMac – but The Silver Scene's statement as a whole has a strength and lucidity that is admirable in this time of general random disintegration. This musical endeavor obviously knows what it is and what their work in the new society is. And who are they?
Well, Ethan Theme can play guitar, “a variety of keyboard-type instruments,” drums and bass; he's a hell of a singer too. He loves Lou Reed, who was been greatly influenced by Ornette Coleman, "the famous alto saxophonist with Free Jazz," and, it says here, "began professional study in self independence, but was no pedagogue." And I can believe that and you should too. It must be noted that for Ethan and his Silvers, music of the past is hardly the sole influence. Maybe surprisingly — or not — Car Seat Headrest is a massive influence. Frontman Will Toledo was an impetus for Absent Expression to even exist at all.
“I had always heard songs I wanted to recreate but I knew I could never be part of a band — and then I heard the full compositions he made all alone from his basement, and learned it was possible, and that I wouldn't have to be the first to do it. From there I got greedy with everything I heard and started doing covers and began a many year phase of studying music for any sounds that stood out to me.”
So what came first for the evasive Silvers? Evade they might — but they also leave a breadcrumb trail for the listener to follow and chase, with the music's innovation and successfully crafted presentation of it.
Well, there was a premature debut single for an art installation, which — much like Andy Heck's work — I refuse to believe this installation was ever proposed or much less written. So naturally that's a great tri-single and the guy who would've written its review was a pompous punk. Not that any of the things I would've said about the single's sound were so untrue, it's just that with time and the mellowings of maturity I can easily see how such a repetitive, freaked-out trio-o-tracks, neo-shoegazing has great value indeed; Henry Rollins and his girlfriend used to drink wine and listen to it as night fell like an iron curtain on the Massachusetts Commonwealth, and I own two copies now myself, although my paranoid purple dog jumped up and got it stuck on Discovery ID and broke the disc when competing for the best spot on the sofa when World Cup Fucking International was on… I like to watch things on television.
And anyway, before my half-ass essay was scrawled, The Silver Scene had gone the way of Roman á Clef, and legions of other great rock bands of New York. The Silver Scene was in full frenzied bloom. The first proper record, Absent Expression (which, translated from art-world speak, literally, means "You're not entitled to know what I want."), I have listened to over 50 times now (thank you last.fm), and can tell you it been released in this country to corrode/open Gen-Z and Millennial minds, and to win converts to the Silver ethic and aesthetic.
Part Three: Absent Expression
Absent Expression is, let me say at the outset, one of the finest recordings of art-rock of the 2000s, and will blow you straight to the shores of Ceres if you are prudent enough to turn off your Bob Dylan b-day celebration music, and especially the latest Porter Robinson. If or when it becomes available in physical form, it must be imposed upon by a sticker with some futuristic script broadcasting the words "Electric Rock Idee 3000," which was affixed to CAN's Future Days album and recently their phenomenal Stuttgart 1975 triple LP live album, which indicates that the people that record and/or promote both groups are aware that they are way out in front of a real vanguard/renaissance type sonic art-rock scene.
Absent Expression is a sonic game changer; and in both its grooves and mystery positively drips atmosphere. The album artwork is impressive, like something right lost from perhaps multiple progressive art movements of the 20th century, or perhaps the production of Conny Plank. But its maker escapes all the revivalist trappings of the 20th century rock aesthetics by revelling in an enigmatically minimalistic look and the futuristic music inside. And I don't mean “sci-fi” when I say futuristic. I mean, ahead of its time.
Its music is experimental in the best possible sense, showing the unmistakable use of a xan'd out (or 'luded out?) compressed Motorik beat. The album is largely taken up by what I feel are sort of unintentional, but very successful suites of post-psychedelic art rock instrumentals, which features such inextricable-from-each-other sections as 'Motion II' and 'Monium'. The Silver Scene's soft-opening EP Themes for the Installation, where most of the "songs" (listed 3 on Spotify even though they are to everyone, but its creator) are the same blacksea era Fennesz meets 1975 Lou Reed noise jam defiantly and gracefully listed as themes which follow one another ('Theme A', 'Theme B', 'Theme C'). Absent Expression reveals a penchant for opaque titles which feel a bit too alienating. I don't know what many of these words mean, and I don't want to look them up because I feel like they are the facet of the record that is overly serious, disingenuous, and uptight. Luckily — it's the only such facet. I know and feel like The Silver Scene can do better than this, and it's extremely important for first impressions not to feel condescended to.
As for the music, 'Racera,' 'Motion II,' and 'Monium' together are like some lysergic opera, with swirling backgrounds of guitar noise attacks and great, dry, and steady drum beats backing up these hypnotic rhythms. I think it's the only time I've heard anything highly comparable to Jefferson Airplane's jams like 'Spare Chaynge' or CAN's 'Quantum Physics' that don't feel derivative — just reminiscent, while being entirely their own new creation and sound. The first half of the record does have individually distinct, recognizable songs. 'Access (Motion I)' bears certain structural and melodic resemblances to The Durutti Column's 'A Sketch for Summer', although the textures are far thicker and the mood much darker, sometimes to the point of overpowering the listener and turning his brain to the resinous extract of Burroughsian Mugwump spinal fluid, and 'Immersion' is a surging piece which flipped me out one night when I suddenly realized that the guitar melody in it was fascinatingly similar to the folk-classical 'Shopski Tanz/Chope Dance' performed by the Phillipe Koutev ensemble on Elektra/Nonesuch's amazing, but decidedly non-rock, Music of Bulgaria album. However this one is slow and comforting as a bottle of opioid cough syrup; over its time it keeps pulling the listener in with threateningly magnetic strength to a psychotropic high of sorts. It's rather stunning to listen to what I consider an album of jams and that there is no wasted note — all of it is exciting and actively engaging. Mysterious and impassive The Silver Scene may be, but they know what they're doing, and they know how to engage their audience.
The latter half of the album following the “suite” I described earlier has tracks of similar length to the former. They certainly have their moments, but the pounding, relentless floodtides of guitar sound, a stoned motorik beat, and distorted and emotive guitar leads (which are the group's hallmark) seem to work better in the more controlled settings of previous songs which pulsate with urgency. 'Imminence' uses a fabulous guitar tone, glitteringly tinsel-like electric organ and a wall of noise straight out of the Warholian days of The Velvet Underground. Crashes of cymbals bear some resemblance to Deafheaven's more ambitious and moving tracks such as “You Without End” and “Vertigo” (those swirls of heavenly guitar work better here though because they don't take themselves too seriously — it feels natural). It's a great listening experience, and I'm excited by what comes next from the Silvers, possibly further exploring this fuller sound. The organ is a very welcome addition and I would like to hear the group experiment more with such sounds that don't allow the material to sit in a Sonic Youth or Amon Düül II wading pool of mildly corrosive acid soothed by Laudanum. I'm not sure that anything ever really happens in the track, but maybe that's the point of it. The Silver Scene has made me reevaluate my ideas about music for sure, but I don't know if anti-climactic defiance suits them best. The closer exhibits the best guitar-playing Ethan Theme has to offer. Those clean tones are a palette cleanser as you exit the world of mercurial and transgressively innovative art-rock you have been exploring like an acid trip.
Part Four: TAKE AN INHALE AND BELIEVE IN ETHAN THEME
The Silver Scene's record Absent Expression reflects the application of a wide variety of musical and artistic knowledge, and what you tune into when you listen to is merely a sampler of the result. Absent Expression, while a refinement and maturation of the directions charted in Themes for the Installation, is still a totality, and deserves the most intelligent and committed kind of listening. It is not light music, but its seriousness is fortified by the scope of its venturesomeness and its profound originality. Again at least half of it is composed of musical sequences in which a series of songs seem to wind and flow and twist around in and through each other, so that it is challenging, if not impossible, to determine just where, say, 'Motion II' ends and 'Monium' begins. The best thing to do is see that this work is most successful in its entirety and to get as soon as possible into the warp and woof of the complete work. It's all extremely good.
Tradition of the first half is divided into five parts that flow right into each other without demarcating bands and is actually composed of sequences running through a myriad of changes: foreboding and folk-like guitar melodies not unlike Godspeed You! Black Emperor or The Lemon Twigs combined, high keening drones, pounding motorik drums and an upbeat segment ('Motion II') with dulcet parsley tones. Later the music turns from folk forms to an almost avant-garde classical sound ('Entropia'), with charging low guitar drones and swirling, playful guitar noises a bit reminiscent of Neil Lord's volume swells on Future Museums' classic Mercury White Borneo, the entire ensemble finally coming together in one pulsating drone that rides over and out. 'Excess (Motion III)' begins with a descending scale eventuating looping riffs a-la-Gkfoes Vjgoaf, with a gentler texture of feedback, and landing on a precipice of guitar bends overridden by an Aguirre: Wrath of God driven Jimmy Jackson choir organ-esque eulogy standing upon scraped guitars melting absolute walls of calming sound that are always coherent and controlled but whose source is not always readily identifiable…
The sense is of Burroughsian literary techniques, which were themselves derived from 20th Century graphic arts, applied to music, massed bowed or amp-distorted strings cut up and rearranged in a sound collage fading into a neo-psychedelic (with zero hippie trappings of the 60s) worthy of including vocals, whether audible or not. I'm not saying that this music derives from some mystic Outer Source, but that The Silver Scene's assimilation and synthesis of all major 20th and 21st Century musical idioms is so astonishing that you sometimes don't know exactly what you are hearing.
Absent Expression is less a psychedelic hippie trip and more like a hypnagogic form comparable to the later live work of the Stooges, which was an endless wrangling tangle of fine, fine noise that you could live in. It's a real aural environment! It is authentically hypnotic. There has never been an artist quite like The Silver Scene before, and there may never be another to transmute so many sounds ever again. One thing is certain: we are doing ourselves a disservice if we let this intrepid vector go by us.
Upon recommending the album for listening to Popol Vuh and Amon Düül II's Daniel Secundus Fichelscher, he had this to say:
"With Ethan Theme and The Silver Scene, this New York act establishes itself as one of the most astonishing groups anywhere... a type of musical happening, in which all the forms of the avant-garde and contemporary rock music are included. The steadily hammering beat gives the essential balance; without it the ear would be exhausted in a crazed running between manifold pictures, windings, highs and lows… For us it is the discovery of a new dimension in rock music: a fantastic surrealism, a new spectacle."
To which I can only add, having just returned from another headphone-session with Absent Expression, a present expression of agreement. This is a time that somebody has arisen out of seemingly nowhere with something to teach us (and fry our brains in the process) about "our" music and the music of the universe. It's happened before, you know — but this time is necessary for anyone in 2021 who deems themselves in touch with music.
Written by Michael Ramirez
He studied printmaking, performance art, critical theory, and Russian studies at the University of Arkansas, Virginia Commonwealth University, Columbia University, and NYU. His ethnic appearance might be described as Israeli or Maghrebi. He is apparently fluent in Spanish. He lives in New York City in a garbage pail with 13 dead cats.
The Silver Scene may be reached at thesilverscene.online@gmail.com