Moonshake

August 1 - 8, 1 9 9 6 [Off the Record]

*** Moonshake

DIRTY & DIVINE

(C/Z)
Synth samples, serpentine riffs from an electronically treated saxophone, dub-inflected bass, and a collage of man- and machine-made rhythm tracks -- that's the foundation upon which David Callahan has been building Moonshake for the past five years. Like Stereolab, whose former member Katherine Gifford duets with Callahan on the hypnotic opening track of Dirty & Divine, Moonshake got their start blending organic guitar drones and synthetic keyboards. But when founding Moonshaker Margaret Fiedler went off to form Laika in 1994, she took the guitar with her, leaving Callahan to push his cinematic vision of the urban landscape further into the realm of skewed sampling.
Dirty & Divine relies equally on Callahan's skills as a noirish storyteller with a taste for minimalist poetry, a tasteful arranger, and a restrained crooner. (Imagine the Fall's Mark E. Smith with a Cole Porter fixation and a much better voice.) His muse is the seductive ebb and flow of mechanized city life. He serenades industrial girders and the machines that put them there in "Cranes," swings from a 21st-floor balcony in "Up for Anything," and celebrates a life of crime in "House on Fire." Each of these is set against such a compelling groove that, for the first time, Moonshake sound like a band rather than an experiment in sonic architecture.
-- Matt Ashare
(Moonshake join New Kingdom and Ultra Bidé downstairs at the Middle East this Friday, August 2.)