Monroe’s Pills: Beyond Anything “Indie”

The Moscow outfit Monroe’s Pills (Tabletki dlia Monro) are no fans of promotional hassle.  The band’s three members leave almost no verbal trace upon the internet, which may be no great loss, since their new recording is extremely impressive and in no evident need of textual support.  The recent, five-track EP, “Pets Riot” may yet prove itself to be one of the best instrumental releases of the year.

Monroe’s Pills are three young men (Misha, Sasha, and Zhenia) who’ve played together since late 2007.  The briefest of accompanying texts then tells us that “the band play an amazing style of instrumental and/or experimental music.  The instruments are interwoven with electronic sounds in a really harmonious way.”  Left with that dearth of information, we’re forced – perhaps fortunately – to draw conclusions from the music itself.

To our surprise, we’ll discover that the theme of “harmonious interweaving” is actually very pertinent.

Dragging and dropping tracks back and forth between ITunes – especially if they’re poorly tagged, independently published materials – is a process that can often cause havoc with the running order of EPs or albums.  The sequence of tracks on “Pets Riot” should, if possible, be preserved, since it lies at the core of what makes the release so important.

The opening number (”Pets”) begins with delicately layered idm, hence the decision to place this release in our “Electronic” rubric.  Nonetheless, the electronic aspect of these instrumentals is merely their foundation.  Within two and a half minutes, some insistent, distorted guitar work makes it clear that we’ll not be constrained by keyboards or mixing desks.  The second image in this post offers further evidence of the band’s desire to mine two traditions at once.

The EP’s next composition, “Walking with Lenin,” is built in a similar, but even more surprising fashion.  Jauntily strummed guitars, showing no indication of anything other than good humor, collapse time and time again into complete discord.

From idm to feedback; from Lenin’s hop & skip to something extremely ominous… “Pets Riot” (as in its very title) draws some bold and disconcerting connections between comfort and collapse.  Were we to take a rather suspect, pseudo-intellectual approach at this point, we could no doubt lapse into talk of styles negating one another in a true Marxist/Leninist spirit, turning quantitative changes to qualitative benefit.

We’ll restrain from doing so, however.  (Cue general sigh of relief.)  Events on stage are clearly too immediate and visceral to prompt anything cerebral.

The following two tracks, “Antennas of the Soviet Ships” and “Reconstruction of the Pripyat” treat these dramatic, criss-crossing opposites in different ways.  The former uses barely audible Russian monologues and the crackle of maritime radios to embody disparate, disconnected parts of language that are barely able to stay in touch.  The two core elements of a dialog float further away from one another.

The latter work – which refers to the area around Chernobyl’s disastrous nuclear plant (below) – does exactly the opposite.  Electronic and guitar-driven elements may gravitate helplessly away from one another in “Antennas,” but “Reconstruction” – as the title suggests – builds an almost funky groove into its looping forms.  Synths and guitars work in tight, orderly patterns.  The background radio-dialog is also clearer, here made from snippets of English-language news talking about the Chernobyl meltdown.

The closing number, an eleven-minute exercise called “Cats in a Cold Water” (sic), places the guitars to one side for a more nuanced interface of rock-driven rhythms and the delicate, even sparkling sounds from some of their chosen electronic tools.  It shows, on a grander scale, how Monroe’s Pills perceive their work – just as that banal promo-phrase suggested! – as a process of “interwoven harmonies.”  Or, more accurately, this is a band trying discover how and when such marriages are possible.

And that brings us to a final observation about the group’s self-presentation online without recourse to traditional PR devices.  What’s especially intriguing is the manner in which Monroe’s Pills list all of their musical tools side by side with their uploaded video work.  It’s as if we’re shown all the gadgets available, before the three musicians even begin navigating a path between two performance styles that are usually (if not stubbornly) kept apart.  We peek briefly into their workshop; after all, this is an ensemble that stresses processes over goals, and experimentation over finished products.

We see references to a Fender Jaguar, a Kaoss pad, padKontrol, MacBook, After Effects, Ableton software, Max/MSP processing tools, and the Alesis Micron synthesizer.  Tools both old and (very) new; two traditions in one list.  At a time when Western audiences grumble with increasing volume about the need for guitar-driven “indie” ensembles to step aside in the name of innovation, Monroe’s Pills are producing some fascinating and impressive experiments into what might follow.  They do so, to boot, without epigonism.

By throwing so many disparate devices into one tool box, they deserve sustained praise for trying to overcome some of modern music’s most enduring cliches: the contention that electronic music lacks warmth, and that guitars lack any sense of evolution.

The very fact that Monroe’s Pills fit none of our chosen rubrics is already a sign of hope.

Download music and images from this site to your smartphone!  Go to www.cloudtrade.com and look for us under far_from_moscow

Next Page »