Bearing in mind his CV, which includes collaborations with electronica's leading lights such as KID 606, Matmos and with Bjork on her "Vespertine" tour last year, your reviewer couldn't wait to get his teeth sunk quarely into LESSER'S oeuvre with the bizarrely titled "Suppressive Acts 1-X".
Sadly, though, the reputation far outweighs the reality as Lesser's ambitious claim to 'bind a history of metal to a career in electronica' is bloody hard going throughout, and more often than not ends up careering down waffly blind alleys peopled with more bleeps and bloops than a breaker's yard for Daleks.
Lesser answers to the name J.Doerck when his relatives are around and has previously served time with San Fran punkers A Minor Forest, which is probably why "Suppressive Acts 1-X" opens with a serious red herring. "Act 1 - The Science Of Pathology" is a bruising metal track waving heartily at Slayer, Motorhead and Moby's "Animal Rights" as it careens past. Venomous and uncompromising, it features gut-scraping vocals from the creature from the black lagoon and would probably put the willies up Aleister Crowley if he wasn't already dead. Yeah!! Er....hang on, isn't this supposed to be wibbly electronica?
Ah! Yeah, well we were coming to that, because "Act.1.." throws a hefty dummy indeed and most of what follows IS squelchy, bloopy electronic doodling, with apparently random samples punching windows in and out of the murk. And really most of it just sounds like someone taking the piss. Twenty years ago, people like Can's Holger Czukay and Brian Eno were releasing experimental albums where hypnotic rhythms were allied to apparently found sounds, snippets of radio broadcasts and primitive samples and the results were intoxicating and entirely forward-looking and now - with the benefit of technology on his side - Lesser releases something unfocussed and unlistenable in the name of experimentation. People, we seem to have lost something along the way.
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Truthfully, the best thing about the album are some of the titles ("Young, Dumb, Full Of Come & Destroying My Will To Live" and "That Shit Might Fly In The Sticks" are two of the funniest examples), but even these pale as the album progresses and even Bob Pollard would probably reject the likes of "Indicators And Indices Of Subjugation" once the beer's worn off. Musically, the tracks become difficult to distinguish individually and even when an interesting idea emerges ("That Shit Might Fly In The Sticks" sounds initially like a nastier version of Warp's Chris Clark; "Better Than Hawaii" briefly takes on the subterranean hue of early Cabaret Voltaire), Lesser insists on breaking down any possible dawning rhythms and loses the plot virtually as soon as he stumbles upon it.
A great shame, all told, as the preamble and Doerck's track record had attracted your reviewer like a moth to a flame. Impossibly, those in the know suggest "Suppressive Acts 1-X" is actually easier to understand than its' predecessor, 2000's "Gearhound", but bearing in mind this new one's about as accessible as a regular bus service to Pluto, that's kinda hard to swallow.
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