Albums like 999 Levels of Undo offer a particular challenge to writers and reviewers. As much as I'm eager to recommend the album for its sheer originality and unpredictability, I'm not entirely certain what the hell I can say about it.
Fisk has a long and storied discography. You might know him from his work with cult instrumentalists Pell Mell, or from his cassette releases on K Records. He has done production work for a whole handful of bands, including Screaming Trees and Beat Happening, and even had a track on one of Astralwerks' now-venerable Excursions in Ambience samplers. The point of this career rehash isn't to prove that I've read the one-sheet, but to make it clear that you simply can't predict the direction that Fisk's next creative effort will take.
Fisk's early "solo" sonic explorations were rooted in the cut-and-paste aesthetic, and digital production methods allow him, as the title implies, an almost infinite amount of control over his raw materials. Here, he takes archaic keyboard atmospheres and samples, adds the performances of a handful of guest musicians and vocalists, dices the whole mess down -- sometimes to an almost molecular level -- and begins to reassemble. As production techniques go, this isn't ground-breaking methodology; pretty much any idiot with a high-end computer and infinite patience can do the same. The challenge, and the skill, comes in how well you put this stuff back together. It's easy enough to string audio artefacts together into an unlistenable noise collage and call it "art". Fisk, on the other hand, wants his work to be not only listenable, but enjoyable. As he reverses elements of his melody, or chops the boring bits from a vocal sequence and compresses the remaining material, he's free to feel his way forward. With 999 Levels of Undo, no decision is permanent, no art is static and no raw materials lack malleability.
"My Head Popped," which begins the disc, plays by its own rules. Nominally categorizable as an ambient-dub-funk-n-bass hybrid, the song combines mellotron drone, fibrillating beats, reverse-gated rhythms, screaming voices deep in the mix, a gentle piano interlude and a synthesized voice repeating a sequence of events that begins with the title phrase. It seems to be, if not unplanned, downright aimless, its driving rhythm frequently stalling and slipping into gulfs of echoey silence or sinister thrumming beats and choral samples. "Time, Speed, Language" is similarly moody, punctuated by skittering rhythmic breaks; an urgent beat runs down its middle, tagged by a keyboard sequence that sounds like a mad supercomputer. There's a very pretty vocal performance somewhere in the mix, but Fisk seems determined to hack it to bits or obscure it with smeared optigan atmosphere.
"Where's the Fire" momentarily recalls Beck, utilizing a crisped-up hip-hop beat and a spoken-word vocal sequence, but becomes something infinitely cooler than Mr. Hansen could ever pull off -- a bubbling cauldron of detuned string twang, burbling bleeps and heavily treated vocals. Here, as on the rest of 999 Levels of Undo, you get the feeling that you're on a railroad track, rolling forward into the inky blackness of uncharted territory. You might recognize familiar elements as you're moving forward, but nothing offers any clue as to where the music will take you next.
Given that description, you'll be surprised by how listenable 999 Levels of Undo turns out to be. It'll probably take a couple of spins to work its way inside your head, but once you let it play through a few times you'll find yourself moving easily to its unexpectedly seductive rhythms and trying to recognize puzzle-piece elements like Heather Duby's vocals, Kim Thayil's guitar work and the slashed-up bass action of Fisk's Pell Mell cohort Greg Freeman.
999 Levels of Undo deserves your attention. Whether you're a pop-music fan looking to push in new directions, or a highly experimental listener in search of a little entertainment, Fisk's latest bag of tricks is well worth opening.
