Mission of Burma:
Snapshot EP
[Matador; 2006]"Never indulgent," drummer Peter Prescott drolly remarks after Mission of Burma finishes a six-minute version of "Absent Mind", the third track/indulgence of a radio session captured on Snapshot. The first track and indulgence of this session, "Tremelo", seethes for more than eight minutes, building from the titular guitar treatment echoing against itself to the full band working up a frothy sludge where the line between live performance and pre-recorded tape segments blur. The second, "Youth of America", tips the scales at 6:40. It’s a cover of a Wipers song on which its songwriter Greg Sage claimed: "many radical recording techniques [were]…used to bring [the song a] frantic realism."
Astute listeners will notice that Sage’s radical recording techniques eerily mirror the loop work former Burma member Martin Swope inserted into MoB’s songs. Interestingly, Burma excises Sage’s trippy loop chicanery from their cover, distilling the propulsive barn-burning fury from the original’s grand punk meandering. Instead, Roger Miller’s frantic vocals are treated with an apocryphal echo, and his guitar wrangling strikes a similarly anthemic pose. Throughout "Snapshot", Miller proves adept at playing the instrument as a musical tool as well as using it as a noise device, treating feedback and distortion with the same respectful disdain that a Guitar World coverboy would show an arpeggio and a hammer-on solo. But I digress.
Prescott’s "Absent Mind" was the only new track essayed during this eight-song session. After its song-part ends– you know, the verse-chorus stuff– comes four minutes of vamping that accurately mirrors one’s mind going AWOL. Miller makes like a guitar hero yet again, Clint Conley holds down the fort as best he can with his bounding bass work, and Prescott scats across his drumkit while screaming about being master of his domain and nothing ever going his way. Eventually, the stumbling and bumbling ceases, and the small crowd gathered in the studio applaud.
It’s disingenuous of me to call the "Absent Mind" outro "stumbling and bumbling" as if it were some extended goof that just happened to coalesce into something useful. If Snapshot serves any purpose, it proves that Mission of Burma have live chops– even though the group is only two years removed from a 19-year hiatus. Of course, the topic of Burma’s inexplicable return to stage and studio is well-worn: post-punk pioneers ignored in their heyday return to active duty two decades later as standard-bearers for a growing group of fans and peers, and yadda yadda yadda, they don’t suck. Still, it’s not everyday that a rock group performs a concert with an opening act that named themselves after one of the headliner’s albums.
In light of Burma’s unavoidable influence, the pomp and circumstance that heralded their return was warranted, and a long time coming– think of the "Inexplicable Tour" (the handful of reunion shows Burma played in 2002) as a long-awaited victory lap, and the recording of and touring behind their 2004 LP ONoffON as the post-victory spoils. Those two events served, in a sense, as the culmination of all the work Burma put into their music, along with all the music the members created outside of it. Now, after that glorious hoohah comes the part of the story where this highly influential, widely lauded bastion of rock music sets aside the accolades and adulation and goes back to making music simply for the sake of making music. And this is where Snapshot comes in.
The second definition of "snapshot"– the one that doesn’t tie in with a highly-quotable Burma lyric– is "an isolated observation". So consider Snapshot in that light: The songs chosen for this session might not be the most well-known of Burma’s career– there’s no "Revolver" or "Academy Fight Song" (usually found, in live settings, riding the coattails of "Max Ernst")– but they’re representative of the group at this point in time. The session’s opening three songs exemplify the group’s inquisitive, exploratory nature, while "Red", "Dirt", and especially "That’s How I Escaped My Certain Fate" are straight-forward sorties that pull no punches. "Certain Fate", in particular, sounds remarkably similar to the version recorded on Vs. last century. Conley nonchalantly announces the song title before the group charges straight into the track, with his vocals ("This might be!/ Your only chance!") hitting the same frenetic notes found on the original cut. It’s a remarkable performance.
In concert, it’s difficult to miss the tape looper Bob Weston’s contributions, even if he’s stationed out of sight behind the mixing board. However, on the new record, his presence is seamlessly integrated into the fabric of the songs. He loops the delirious ping-ponging dada chant at the end of "Max Ernst", he throws back the "oooh wee oooh"’s of "Red" at varying speeds during the bombastic climax, and he plays Roger Miller against himself near the end of "Tremelo". Weston’s best works, however, can be found in "Mica", the group’s best performance from this session.
Fans will undoubtedly remember the beginning of this song: the five-note guitar figure, a tweaked version of the Close Encounters motif, played slowly at first, then played a little faster, then faster, then faster, until the drums hop on board and the song zips off. Weston adds a distorted brassy wheezing noise that sounds like a slowed-down train whistle. Combined with Miller’s increasingly faster playing, this loop ably complements the track’s locomotive introduction.
As on the recorded version, Conley’s vocals are spit back at him backwards as the band stabs their way through the song. At first, this second voice is barely discernible; the second time through, however, these reversed voices almost drown out Conley’s actual voice, dressing the would-be patient detailed in these lyrics in damning clothes. When the musical chaos gives way to Prescott’s tribal beating towards the end, this second voice continues jabbering, making the final question posed by the lyrics– "What could I say to that?"– that much more poignant. And when the song finally comes to a shuddering halt, Weston brings back that distorted whistle one last time, signaling the end of this wild ride. In the hands of lesser talents, these tricks and trials would come off as overindulgent; in Burma’s hands, they’re masterful additions. Peter Prescott was taking the piss with his little aside, but he was spot on. Mission of Burma: never indulgent. And rarely better.
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– David Raposa, January 18, 2005