The Subliminator

The Subliminator
Rake

(Scared)

US release date: 29 July 2008
by D.M. Edwards

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cover art
Amazon

The Subliminator growls a poetic narrative over sonic blips that sound like they originally emanated from Hawkwind or Throbbing Gristle. By adding his poetry to a combination of Theremins, vocal processors, and phrase samplers he somehow perpetrates a naked, nocturnal, sensory mugging. His “Howl!” hilariously rips passé art-tourists with a serious global and planetary challenge. “Opa-Locka” lays bare well-honed space-rock roots. There’s a stab at lust-angst on “Exploding Hearts”. “Paper Cranes” is tender and believable, a fittingly circular piece on the depressing predictability of domestic violence (though I wish he’d given the phrase “too beautiful for this world” a wide berth.)

The Subliminator resembles Lemmy’s unemployed barber and in real life he rides to gigs on a motorbike. Good then, that he happily pokes fun at his tough guy biker image on “Yankee Girl Mojo”. The fact that he performs in the SE, out of Atlanta, makes me like him even more. That said, my visions of him playing behind much needed chicken wire are probably a stereotypical exaggeration. That’s a pity, because I’d pay to throw ironic bottles at his head while clapping with one hand. In conclusion: wit, pseudo-Gregorian-space chants, 4 Theremins and a microphone, or something. There’s a great poster (which of course I now can’t find) with some Pabst Blue Ribbon imagery framing an image of The Subliminator that is somehow perfect. As he says: Mission Accomplished.

* * Multiple songs MySpace

RATING:
- Pop Matters

The word speaking and theremin playing avant-garde artist known as The Subliminator, aka Serson Brannen, returns with his sophomore album, Rake. This latest effort brings everything you would want and expect from his dark, experimental project. While you definitely need to be in the right mood to jam this one, I think it is a rather accessible album for something so crazy and over the top. Dive into the abyss: - Ohmpark

At first listen, the uninitiated may find The Subliminators’ Rake completely offputting.

Its mélange of sound, hollowedout spoken word delivery and abstract music are absolutely indifferent to the common mosaic of mainstream and non-mainstream music alike. It is experimental and ambient, post-apocalyptic and spacey at the same time.

Making it past “Howl,” a zip-zap nod to Ginsberg’s poem, offers results in the form of the world flavor mood of “Shaheed,” in which ex-Spaceseed vocalist Serson Brannen offers, “But is Jerusalem more sacred than Oklahoma City? / Not to an Okie / Is Mecca more sacred than Atlanta / Not to me, Not to me.” Brannen’s words intersect calm, soothing

Arabic harmonies. At times abrasive, other times harmonious, Rake is incoherent coherence, navigating mood and sound with one strong voice as narration, spouting philosophy and opinions or stories of bleakness and humanity.

Rake is a mood inducer, be it stressful or warmth. The construction of songs is built on repetition and brief musical ideas – straightforward keyboard patterns and looped vocals. Rake is a church sermon against a backdrop of ghosts in the machine, machines to build the music and a human voice delivered electrically and passionately, like synthesized humanity. The Subliminator is spoken word techno-psychedelia in the

midst of the burgeoning Area Code Noise movement of modern music. While Rake is no bitter pill to swallow, it is an acquired taste, one that is fruitful to those interested in something beyond the well known verse-chorus-verse of genre music. It is futurist poetry laid against compositions made from the scraps of music’s elegy. Orwellian in feel, The Subliminator is humanism with an Atari soundtrack. (Scared Records)

www.myspace.com/thesubliminator

-Brian Tucker - South East Performer

Chanteuse/pianist Amanda Green and noise legend Rat Bastard join Atlanta's the Subliminator on tonight's bill. The black-clad producer/guitarist tends to get quizzical looks when he steps on stage, but once the Subliminator unleashes his droning, hypnotic tracks, people listen. Over looping synth lines and the occasional theremin, he issues monotone, echoing sermons and directives that numb audiences into sleepwalking submission. It all makes for a maddening experience that's both eerily off-putting and endlessly fascinating.

– Jason Jeffers - Flavor Pill

implified. complexi-flip. it's simple spacial-sations of a normal observat-ors -simply grumbling by -and around you, a remaining echo. Motorcycle boots and a careworn face, an exterior that says dont eff with this feller. But in reality, he's seems a very careful and mellow individual. Well spoken and steady studying eyes, he carries a conversation with you,with the audience, that could easily suggest endless paths of experiences. But things are kept very normal speech. Seeing things as they are. The sounds he speaks and simplifies in an overlap,throughout the middle of it- is a raw voice simply talking, but it talks through and around you. These sounds also bare inorganic structures, they use basic elements to collapse and expand in the air. Handed in a disarming way, a way that has a regularity that almost brings you too close to a specific and personal individual, this very thing is also an inexplicable strength. simplification. layered and ripped into flat transparent waves of filmy smoke, it continues. a single thing handed to you somewhere between music and other. thoughts of taking the vocals beyond and into different categories tease and sometimes seem to yearn for erratic tangential dreamy spontaneous patterns, but they do not. they stay here in the waking walk. where the wheels meet the road. if anything else were put to this it would be recognized as a place in which it belongs. this uncategorizable thing indicates endless potential,but only for those careful enough to realize what to leave out and how to leave just yourself in. and deliver that with feeling. Floating somewhere in between. often potentially trance enducing, strange digitally manifested creatures will wriggle across the top abruptly. the individual chants across the center of the storm with introspective simplicities that all can relate to. oscillating between inaccesible vehicles swinging three fisted subtle thoughts straight up, and a numb bluntness that smoothly lands in your lap.
hell ,as far as what his intentions are..no effing clue. for all i know he's one of those lizard people that certain conspiracy people talk about. ya know, he could be insane, but i doubt it. prolly just likes trying to make cool sounds. im curious to see where he takes it. - Art Atlanta

Ex-Spaceseed worsmith/gizmoist Serson Brannen explores the outer limits of high tech spoken word space art on "Recalibrated"
, and as the new high priest of the temple of cosmic slam poetry he fills a void that's been sadly vacant since the heady acid daze of Robert Calvert, Daevid Allen, and Gilli Smyth. Reminiscent in some ways of Nik Turner's "Xitintotoday" (though without the Egyptian mythos) and Mother Gong's more overtly poetic forays into spiritualized psychedelic rock speak, "Recalibrated" often sounds like Jack Kerouac teleported to the 21st Century and loaded into a Macintosh. Brannen's verbal Gymnastics especially on pieces like "The Lone Gunman Theory" and "Seduction" mix conspiracy theory and alien abduction with inner visions of the apocalypse to come. Accompanied by theremin, an assortment of processors, and some occasional synthesizer and synthetic percussion, Brannen conducts hypnotic seances that at times morph into electronic ragas for Shivas of the cyber age. This is especially the case on "Alabama Meltdown" the most innervating of the nine tracks on "Recalibrated". Primal electronic rythms from the silicon jungle power Brannen's demonic rantchant through the secret history of an alien invasion on American soil. It's a harrowing 12-minute mini-epic through the surreal alternate reality that's guaranteed to put you into a solid-state trance without having to resort to any of your favorite psychoactive chemicals. One can only imagine what a live Subliminator gig must be like, but if "Recalibrated" is any indication, it must be a real space owwwwwwtttttt! - Aural Innovations #32 (November 2005)

This may actually be one of the stranger recordings to come from Stickfigure Records. Bear in mind that this includes such nois terrorists and sound manipulators as Retconned and Airoes. Essentially, this is electronic music that eschews more traditional associations of the form in favor of wholly embracing the form in all it's precise sterility.
The album opens with a dialogue loop being twisted beyond comprehension. Before you can say, "Oh, shit, another spoken word CD," it becomes clear that beneath the army of stray vocalizations is an ambient foundation. The first track, curiously titled "The Subliminator," leads into a somewhat more conventional "Forbidden Fruit." HAving much in common with Cabaret Voltaire and various early industrial groups, the disturbingly serene piece is just a taste of what lies ahead.
The Subliminator's work is about as far from rock and roll as modern music gets, but traces of other ambient noise groups can be detected as influences. Using drones and loops as the basis for something that approaches a meditive tranquillity more than once, The Subliminator manages to stake out its own territory in experimental music.
Song Titles like "The Lone Gunman Theory" and "Good Rockin' Tonight" are fairly generic names for noise compositions, but The Subliminator's similarities to like-minded artists are restricted to such superficialities. The vocals are usually appropriately haunting and serve to add more organic layers to the mostly cold and techno-fetishist aesthetic. If The Subliminator isn't breaking new ground, the project is certainly original enough to merit an encore. - Southeast Performer (November 2005)