(This record review originally appeared in the SF Weekly.)
SAN FRANCISCO, CA (AP) — Hip underground label Load Records has released the new offering by Bay Area heavies Burmese just in time for the mad holiday rush. This “22-minute peep show of infantile erotica,” as one SF Weekly critic calls it, consists of six tracks featuring the group’s gratuitously violent metal-plated low-end noise attack, as exemplified by the plodding “Rapewar,” the crunching march of black boots titled “Preyer,” and the mind-freak closer, “Just Say Cunt.” “Separating Burmese’s provocative song titles from the actual music leaves little for the ears to actually enjoy save a rather pedestrian interpretation of early-’90s noise-rock,” explains local salsa musician Rico Habas. “I personally found Spears’ ‘(Hit Me) Baby One More Time’ video — the one where she plays a little fuck-me-hard Catholic schoolgirl — to be a more vivid, spicier pedophiliac nightmare than Burmese’s,” quips Tenderloin prostitute Cookie Platter. “These dudes got, like, what, two basses and two drum sets and they still can’t bust the mutant groove? This shit’s weak,” bemoans a longtime Haight Street denizen known locally as Wizard.
Some tin-eared critics will write, “Hey dude, Sightings is the new noise.” Do not believe this chicanery. Sightings is an extremely dissonant dance band. In fact, it is the first hybrid of Confusion Is Sex-era Sonic Youth white-noise and subatomically designed minimal techno. The eight tracks that comprise this new jam — the NYC trio’s fourth and best studio release — are true 21st-century tribal grooves flickering rhythmically like a faulty tube of frosty-blue fluorescent lighting. And Sightings has placed your position, as listener, within that flicker, and that is one violently loud place to be sequestered. From there, the once-distant crackle ‘n’ hum of electricity feels more like a full-bodied seismic reverberation. Snarling six-string feedback cracks the spine like a whip. The corrosive synthesized drums splash across the face and trickle down the chest, leaving smoking radiation burns. Sightings’ nuclear no-wave funk makes my sweat reek like ozone. Listen, this is the new rhythm. This is the new dance. This is the new nervous system.
