REVIEW: WICKED POSEUR - WICKED POSEUR 7" EP

It is a time long since the collapse. It crept slow, but persistent, as the white spotted workhorse spider who tends to her webs during the break in the storms; unwelcome certainly, but on the whole not acting from any ill intent – only the nature of things. An economy built on credit; a credit built on dollars used to buy hydrocarbons for cars and for plastic toys made across the oceans both. A dollar worth less and less, slipping further and further away from the last outcrop its fear-sweating hands can hold to. The dollars go out and more and more they do not come back. Petrol stops trading in these dollars, favoring a more industrial currency, and the sandstone breaks. And to the bottom, now suddenly, the hegemon and his hubris fall.

Collapsed. Poor. Giant roads still stretch from manifest to destiny, but few can afford the gasoline to conquer them. The smokestacks in the far west (it has been a long time since it was known as the Far East) continue unabated. The white bears of the north sink their last claws into solid. Greenland shudders, and throws off her ice cape. The seas rise. The Atlantic Current, engine of industry for Empires Dutch and English before us, stalls as irreparably as any rusted Detroit factory. Weather changes. England under ice. Famine, and fear of strangers and borders that now flee opposite.

But we imagine that, in a time of rags, there will still be those who clutch to the gold C and her mirrored self, caught together in an artifact of status more precious with antiquity. Not quietly will haute go into the night. Unlike what King or Costner might posit, there will be some un-content with campfire ho-downs to the screetch of acoustic folk of the future/past alone. No. Some will preserve. Some will find ways to keep the records spinning. Generated; hand-cranked, solar powered. They will not/cannot let go of the era of excess they themselves have no knowledge of beyond the landfills. What disc for this jockey? What ballad of what was for this dance?

May we suggest Wicked Poseur?

This four song EP, out on the Enduring Self Label, has been like a measurable, pleasurable magic gall stone. We felt it in our collective sides each day, but refused to pass it. For the long stretched months since Arthur Bates first put it in our hands, the longest period of our not putting it on has been measured in days (not weeks). We listened to it to review. We listened to it to enjoy. We played it for others to dance to. We had it on headphone while we read Kevin Phillips and Jared Diamond; finally.

But like a scientist, we could never find resolution to our consideration. After drafts where we bemoaned the death of the sex stained fun of the electro era, and examinations into the psychology of the soloist as creator, we realized what it was we were listening to. Wicked Poseur is winking at us. He is maximizing the excesses of his age into a package that we can enjoy; one our suffering descendants will long for. Beats and basses and synth lines from circuit boards that will no longer work. Adroit musing about sex and drugs (and drawing) and consumerism. It is utterly ridiculous, just as it is to release a recording on a disc made of petroleum in the era of MP3. It is also completely fun, as mind sticky as it is deadpan and as musical as it is mocking. It cuts brisk and vibrant synthetic paths to the inner ear, with the same suite of geometric brightness the cover art inspires in the cortex. It knows you’re over Mrs. Kitten and the Hacker, and it doesn’t give a petrol buck. Recommended.

Wicked Poseur is available from Enduring Self's MySpace Page, but won't be releasing his full length next year - instead, it is due out of Feow, the label that Arthur Bates himself has a hand in. If the new tracks posted on WP's MySpace are any indication, its going to take us a helluva lot longer to review that one. Stoked.