The Triangle

Issue date: 9/26/08 Section: Arts & Entertainment

Media Credit: Bill Sitzman Following the rules of a traditional rock band, yet throwing in their own interpretations, The Faint's sixth studio release still allows listeners to sing a long and dance.

Somewhere in a parallel universe, rock bands reacted to synthesizers, samplers and drum machines as nothing more than experimental instruments. Electronic sound gadgets evolved alongside their mechanical predecessors and the vocabulary of musicians expanded accordingly.

Our world suffered through a 1980s nightmare of keytars, spandex, and drummers playing machines that played prerecorded samples of other artists. The resulting over-reaction by music fans led to a decades-long war against the machines and a strict, inflexible format for all rock bands-drums, bass, one to three guitars and vocals-or else. Backstage and in soundproofed rooms, a shadowy entity known only as "the industry," used an army of computers to erase all traces of humanity from popular music with prerecorded backing tracks and auto-tuned vocals. Rock music, deprived of its spontaneity, died.

Meanwhile, inter-dimensional rifts between the universes began to open in places like Paris, Hamburg, Tokyo, Cardiff, Liverpool, Bergen, and Omaha, Nebraska. The Faint found themselves transported to the latter in the early '90s to help start what would become Saddle Creek Records, which included future members of Bright Eyes and Cursive. Six albums and many remixes later, the band has released "Fasciinatiion" on their own label, half-jokingly titled "Blank.wav" after the endless string of -wave genre names, derived by journalists.

Fans of previous albums will approve of the usual dystopian sci-fi references and robot dance-pop on tracks like "Forever Growing Centipedes," "Mirror Error" and "The Geeks Were Right." But the band also makes an effort to diversify the album with slower, spacier songs layered with Kraftwerk melodies and IDM poly-rhythms. "I Treat You Wrong" is as dark and self-loathing as any faux-emo garbage available at your local Wal-Mart, and "A Battle Hymn For Children" sounds like a younger Peter Gabriel interviewing a generation ordered into perpetual war by their own supposedly peace-loving parents.

"Fasciinatiion" seems calculated to appear cold, mechanical, and lifeless. Closer inspection reveals what is unmistakably the sound of five people in a room full of toys creating a disordered racket-live. The result is the inverse of a contemporary commercial rock record: raw, noisy chaos disingenuously packaged as the output of a computer program. This record still roughly follows the rules of rock music but interprets them loosely. Video game noises and guitars are interchangeable, mechanical grooves augment the drummer and bassist instead of subjugating them, and vocal effects are used as costumes, not cosmetics.

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