Playtime, and: Barcode Music (review)

To combine two of the most potent genres in music must have seemed like a good idea in the 1970s, when a number of jazz/rock "fusion" outfits started to appear on the fringes of the contemporary music scene. National Health typified this kind of pacy, often frantic, style of composition and performance, which ultimately seemed to appeal to neither of its constituencies. This album contains a series of live recordings made during a 1979 United States tour by one short-lived line-up of the band, which went through many personnel shifts in its 5-year existence.

The jazz/rock fusion genre, although technically arresting, tends to its detriment to combine the complexity of jazz with the pretensions and indulgences of rock. What results is a dense, intense, but largely sterile sound-scape that makes up for what it lacks in soulfulness with cleverness. National Health demand the most attention when they allow musical phrases to relax and develop (as in parts of the title track, "Playtime"). But more often, their compositions project an intricate dissonance that distances the uninitiated listener. This CD contains detailed sleeve notes by the band's drummer about the context in which the recordings were made.

"All electronic sounds are 100% barcode controlled," runs the strap line on Günter Schroth's album from experimental music label Archegon. This could be taken either as a polemical statement on the contemporary music industry or as an assurance of the methodological integrity of this product. Either way, it is slightly disappointing that Barcode Music sounds like what you would expect barcode music to sound like. As presented through the apparatus of Günter Schroth, the bar-coded patterns of domestic products produce an industrial "scronk" of wet synthetic noise. Consequently, hearing this record is like listening to an alien sound-effects CD, parts of which are hauntingly evocative and others distressingly intrusive.