Home Delivery

Deer Park drummer David Penna explores electronica

Rafer Guzman | rafer.guzman@newsday.com

March 27, 2008

Article tools

E-mail

Share
- Digg
- Del.icio.us
- Facebook
- Fark
- Google
- Newsvine
- Reddit
- Yahoo

Remember drum and bass? Musicians are still working in that genre - or at least David Penna is. The Deer Park drummer's debut solo disc, "Failure to Obey a Traffic Control Device," harks back to that brief window in the mid-1990s when electronic music - with its ultramodern abstractions, lack of traditional instruments and fashionably faceless practitioners - threatened to obliterate old-fashioned rock and roll and become, as more egghead types predicted, "the new jazz."

Guess what? It actually did become the new jazz, which is to say it dwindled in popularity and now remains the rarefied domain of the aforementioned eggheads.

There's a reason for that: Even today, drum and bass sounds difficult, unfamiliar, a little "avant." I think of it in terms of visual art: If rock and roll is representational (figures, faces, realism), then drum and bass is wholly abstract (pattern, color, texture). If The Beatles are as recognizable as the "Mona Lisa," then drum and bass is as puzzling as one of Mark Rothko's color fields.

All of which makes electronic music tough to analyze, just as modern art can be. If I don't happen to like the color yellow, what can I fairly say about Rothko's "No. 10"? If I don't like blippy melodies, what can I say about Penna's disc? (I do like them, though.)

For the uninitiated, Penna's eight-song album makes a good starting point. It occupies a middle ground, drawing from familiar dance music but also diving into pure rhythm and sound. The track "Soar Beyond" may be weird and spacey, but its dreamy guitar line is reassuring. On "SQL," clubby keyboards mix with rapid-fire beats, while a recognizable human voice keeps the listener tethered to Earth. And "Strange Lights," with its fast and funky bass, really does come close to jazz.

Penna's disc has its flaws, but, of course, that's only an opinion. To fall back on an old saying: I don't know much about art, but I know what I like.

more in /services/newspaper/printedition/thursday/partii

Would you recommend this?

Rate it: