THWOK! Goes The Death Set

My conscious mind wouldn’t associate The Death Set with Venus Williams by a long shot.

My subconscious mind is another matter.

I spent this past week with The Death Set’s terrific new elpee Michel Poiccard and one day (I sleep during the day) I awoke from a dream where Ms. Williams and I were playing tennis. Sort of. With The Death Set’s “A Problem Is A Problem It Don’t Matter Where You’re From” blasting from a boombox on the sidelines, Venus set a tennis ball aloft above her toned, powerful six-foot one-frame and swung her racket to meet the ball.

I heard a sound… THWOK!

I heard another sound… BAP!

BAP! was the sound of that fuzzy day-glo sphere making impact with my forehead. The world went black for a few seconds until I noticed red spots. I thought it was blood and I began to panic and awoke from the dream, but just before I did I realized that the red spots were not spots at all… they were tiny red hearts, flitting around like drunken butterflies, multiplying over and over until they completely filled my dream’s vision. A moment later I was fully awake and writing it all down.

THWOK! is the sound The Death Set makes, and BAP! is the sound of their racket hitting yer skull.

Michel Poiccard (the elpee is named after the car-thieving character in the 1960 Jean-Luc Goddard film Breathless) is fat with tracks that attack yer ears and yer sensibilities. They are exceedingly loud, fast, snotty, obnoxious, and relentless. In other words, THE SOUND OF THE DEATH SET CAN CLEAR OUT A HOT TOPIC STORE IN UNDER THIRTY SECONDS. Just like wheat from chaff. Any kids left standing should be taken under wing — they have a taste for weirdness that should be encouraged and nurtured.

There are moments when The Death Set rivals Atari Teenage Riot in terms of sonic boom, and if yer in anyway familiar with ATI or any other Alec Empire-run digital hardcore mob, you know that’s saying something. But they don’t limit themselves to just THWOK! and BAP!… The hot noisy fun of this elpee is dampened sometimes by sadness, a feeling that passes through the album like occasional clouds. Here’s why: Beau Velasco, a founding member of the band, died in their Brooklyn recording in 2009 of a drug overdose. Velasco is Pro-Tooled in for some vocals, but the heavy lifting is left to co-founder Johnny Sierra.

“I’m trying to wallow in the hope of what can be/Not what’s been taken away,” from the loud pop anthem “It’s Another Day,” is one of several lines apparently written by Sierra to Velasco. The closer, “Is It The End Again,” is as close to melancholy as they allow themselves to get. Sierra spends most of the track singing with some nimble and pretty guitar and bass interplay. He doesn’t come right out and say it, but he misses his friend. He’s lonely. Sierra is in a profoundly sad situation. How he and The Death Set were able to make  this record insanely fun to listen to under the circumstances is beyond me, but they did, to the point of subconscious response in my case.

And any band that can coax Venus Williams into my dreamscape will forever be extremely alright with me.