Kim Gordon's Body/Head New Album "The Switch"
Body/Head, photo by David Black
Kim Gordon and Bill Nace eradicate all borders of conventional music to disassemble sound in Body / Head ‘s most recent album, The Switch Nace has a history in experimental improvisational jazz and rock, and Gordon’s background can be traced all the way back to the roots of Sonic Youth in the 80s. Collaboratively, the two mesh and tremble their guitars into the culmination of a tranquil storm defined by an entity of staticity that cycles resiliently and infinitely; never getting bored and never desiring to diminish the mind of its own. Despite this staticity, Gordon and Nace maintain a limitless energy that still feels carefully calculated and carries the storm throughout the album. The musicians undertake a different creative process in The Switch that overflows even further outside the lines of their previous projects; dissecting and building onto the sound they’ve projected ever since their debut album.
The Switch as a whole is slow. There is no tension and no resolve. Gordon and Nace rely solely on the broken, haunted, almost theremin-like noise their guitars create. Dissonance and reverb linger periodically on opening track "Last Time". At somewhere around the three minute mark Gordon starts mumbling indistinct words; I can only make out a few - “to the wind...scream”. The track is dense and impenetrable, seamlessly flowing into the following song, “You Don’t Need”. As the cracked guitar lingers, Gordon’s voice joins the sound with an even more obscure, lost mood than what had appeared on the first track and furthering the ambiguity of the album.
“Change my Brain” is my favorite track off the album. The song starts out with the same abstract concept that the entire album is characterized by, but by the end of the eleven minute track, the two musicians have inconspicuously managed to create some sort of melody in the anomaly of it all.
Photo: REDEFINE Mag
The guitars of Body/Head are free of boundaries yet so careful and aware of what comes next. The album is a continuous drone centered around the minimalist aspect of what two guitars can produce when stripped from their conventional boundaries and are instead focused on the sonic sensations that occur from body to head.
