DEEP
drive deep downhill
2x3”CD, Dhyana
Why
isn’t there a single review of a Deep-record on here? They must have
released some records ever since I first praised them in the then still printed
version of CRACKED. Oh, there is some mentioning of this
favourite band here and there, but why hasn’t their album
“deepfreezeaberdeen” made it into the
best records of all time section yet? Or is it really true, that
Deep have kept a low profile over the last years, because they have been
busy with other things? (Such as running Dhyana-record, or biking and
running, or visiting Vienna, or something…) Well, the wait was definitely
worth it, if it was necessary to make this release possible, which is
amazing, albeit a little crazy, both in form and music. But, as I have
mentioned before in connection to the
great compilations appearing on Dhyana-records, Bernd and Stefan,
the two masterminds behind Deep, follow only one main rule when doing their
things – they have to like it. And so they come up with ideas that
otherwise would only come expected from genius weirdoes like the Melvins
(who are by common sense the best band of all times).
Who
would release a double three inch CD with one twenty-minutes-track on each
CD? And then give the whole thing a “mountain biking”-theme that runs
smoothly and consequently through each aspect of the cover-production right
up to tacking a piece of used tire, complete with mud and dirt still on it,
to the fold-out-cover! And on the inside there is a picture of their torn
and battered mountain bikes (which is actually what a mountain bike should
look like. What is that, a shining clean mountain bike? What do you need a
mountain bike for, if you only ride it on pavements? Get a city-bike, you
sissy. Or are you one of those fools who would buy a two-ton box of metal
with four wheel drive, designed to drive highways called SUV? Get out of
here, dickhead. But I am getting carried away again…) There are pictures
of a guy racing down a steep slope in the woods, which makes you hope he
isn’t one of the musicians, though I am afraid he is, because he looks as
if he wants to put an end to his musical career at the next possible moment.
Well, “drivedeepdownhill” is a beautiful last release if he kills
himself, so that will make his family proud at the funeral. Just kidding.
Bernd, one of the players in Deep, once took a four-day-bike-ride around the
Bodensee all by himself, sleeping in the woods and riding all day. You need
a certain stubbornness to do that as well, don’t you? And to keep on in
spite of all the pain and odds on the way. Or is it, that if you have
started once, there really is no way but to keep going on?
CD1,
or “down” starts off with some birds singing, and then a bass-line with
one of these beautiful melodies, that vibrate through your heart and brain,
sets in. Then the basses get thicker and more distorted, the melodies change
and change over again, until at the end you are left for a long time with
smoothe noise-sculptures and flowing bass-feedbacks. Deep are actually two
guys on bass with some electronic equipment, who like bathing in
feedback-sounds as much as weird avantgarde free form noise as much as a
beautiful melody. And on these CDs they bring it all together into two
tracks. And they make it work out beautifully. The second CD starts out with
more soothing, low-frequency sounds running through various effects. Could
it be that Deep only chose their name because two basses only provide low
frequencies? I should ask them some time. After some minutes the second
track, called “hill”, changes of course, and some rhythmic noise slowly
starts to creep up, which sounds like water trickling and someone breathing
hard until the vocals start to sing “one day I’ll reach the surface”
with flanged sounds in the background. This is my favourite part of the
whole CD, because it reminds me a lot of the best moments of Pink Floyds
“dark side of the moon”, which are these great elevating moments shortly
before the melody breaks up and the whole track starts to move in a
completely different direction. And so it does right here – a heavy
distorted bass breaks in and underline the vocal melody. This shows me what
Deep could do if they ever became really really successful, with their own
management and production unit, putting up crazy shows for tens of thousands
of people. Or not, because it is just as well as it is right now. Deep can
do as much playing for twelve people in some sodden pub in a small town as
Pink Floyd could ever do for masses of people.
