Function

And from nowhere, it shall come. First line, first track, first words, "Break my heart I yearn to bleed and grow / Train my art I'm novice and mad and slow." There's a muted trumpet doing its best to sonically replicate the feelings behind those words, and Matt Nicholson, creator of Function, picking his guitar to pieces and singing, urging, seducing us, calling "paradigm shift now" whilst Pete Nicholson tells us the price, "to infinite sorrow's breast." And we're not yet three minutes into the seven-minute opener called "Paduka Heart-Nectar." It's too gentle for sadness, too swelling for lethargy. There's even melody in the madness. Whatever - at 2:53 on a Wednesday morning it makes sense. People have sold their soul for less.

Second track "Softest Light Sunday" is exactly that, a delay guitar loop over waves that dawdle in and out, no vocals, just sampled backgrounds, the tiniest chirps, a piano threatening to slip away. And then we hit the western-themed (I'm serious) "Good Man, Dead Man (Hard Lessons in Non-Separateness)," a tale of a town that kills its prophets after worshipping at their feet. The seraphic-sounding Ruth Schoenheimer makes her first vocal appearance, offering high tones to Matt's narrative, and suddenly as a banjo begins to sound the loneliest tune possible, it all makes sense. The full five of Function do well and truly function, taking the best of last year's Glaswegian Desert Hearts and mixing their sound up with Morricone, building up a spaghetti western soundtrack symphony. How can "their hero must be shot and hanged, and so he was" sound so beautiful?

If you hadn't noticed by now, this is magical music, hot shit, serious, suffocating, and sparse, and aesthetically exquisite. Over 17 tracks, many of them instrumental, Melburnians Nicholson and co. have shaped a studio album that showcases all the agony and grandeur and artistic bamboozlement that goes into songs like "Situational Cellophane," "Schoen (Shown)," and the knee-shaking "Air Kiss Air" with the glorious refrain, "no proof needed, air kisses air and space fucks itself". The packaging is something more, 40 pages of black and white photographs and lyrics, offering up almost as much as the music does, yet providing as much confusion (references to a Ruchira Avatar Adi Da Samraj abound) as wry earthy compensation ("she draws me to her breast and smells of mindless treats ah yes").

So like Billy Corgan's dreaming without the histrionics, Function have delivered an album of complexities and joys, of intersecting melodic dirt paths that offer new variations with each listen. Amidst the braying cacophony of trend upon trend, Function have crafted an album that already sounds without time, or beyond it, looking back with subtle drones and feedbacked wry grins of the knowledge that comes with loss. And from nothing it will come, The Zillionaire-Retarded Speeds of Ordinary, Measured Light is the finest album to emerge from Australia this year. You have been warned.

- Geoff, 5/27/03 - Delusions Of Adequacy (.net)

One of this years most intriguing releases comes from a group out of Geelong in
Victoria called Function. Put together by Matthew L. Nicholson Function take
pop music and twist it into a non linear experience with a musical dexterity
and boldness that suggests an ambition to make something entirely new out of a
very tired form.

Function are striving for greatness, almost getting there and stopping in
weirdsville for a kip. - ABC Radio National Australia

Mono.Net Review

From the hands of Matthew Nicholson and co. comes something fresh, innovative, and unusual, that’s varied to the point where it’s rather hard to characterize or rate. It’s called “The Zillionaire-Retarded Speeds of Ordinary Measured Light” (yes you heard right) and the band is Function. Hailing from Geelong, in Victoria, Function provides an eclectic mix of pop, disposition, atmosphere, and instrumental packed (pretty well the whole record) integrity that has moments of brilliance amongst the often strange, weird, say what you like, murky surrounds that join its core.

It starts off strong with the stirring “Paduka Heart-Nectar,” possibly the best track, with its understated vocals, and varying array of instruments (mood-fixing trumpets in the closing stages) and speed. “Break my heart, I yearn to bleed and grow. Train my heart,” they solemnly urge. From the outset you notice the lyrical quality presented here and throughout is outstanding, whether you like the unique blend of music or not. Second up, “Softest Light Sunday” presents a stunning sound scape, but can lose you a touch through the centre, while “Good Man, Dead Man” is a faster tempo, like ah riding a bike, and bombards you with words, in contrast to what’s to come.

The distorted guitars, noise, maraca-style backing, and roughly echoing vocals of “At Several Removes” are uncanny, at the same time entrancing while moments like “Situational Cellophane” with its powering acoustic guitar and vocal accord, make it all worthwhile.
Tracks like “Direct Sunlight on the Lower Branches of Odd Trees”, the spiritual-sounding “The Zodiac, Flat On It’s Back,” and “Open Hands Only Feeling” are poorer than the some of the others and dabble a little too much for mine. Then there’s the likeable “If Only Such and Such, Then Such and Such” which has a cracker of a beat to it that dwindles off, the similarly so “Chaplin’s Gone” which really powers, backed by piano, and the pure deep vocal harmony of “Schoen (shown).” The lyrically, and vocally dense “Air Kiss Air” is the track you just wish was mirrored more throughout the record, for all its passion, but unfortunately isn’t.

The record itself cracks the 77-minute mark, comparatively long, but sufficiently long enough to give due credit to the musical talents within. “The Zillionaire-Retarded Speeds of Ordinary Measured Light” could easily be interpreted as an inconsistent musical mess, but just as easily a stunning masterwork of intriguing musical delights. In the end, it’s the listeners’ prerogative to which you choose, but if it were I answering: well let’s just say, this isn’t any ordinary record; make what you want of it.


by Whitey
July 10, 03 at 8:43 pm - Mono.net