BETA 14 OK

"Beta 14 OK" is Doctor Nerve's third effort, and as all Doctor Nerve and related releases, a showcase for current avant-garde rock at its most radical. The band is tightly focused on mixing the combined heritages of Zappa's dadaist facet, Henry Cow, 20th Century chamber, psychedelia, free jazz and near-punkish rock with a strongly wicked twist. Doctor Nerve stands as a marginal island within the rock music business, yet their sound is ballsier and more energetic than many current mainstream rock bands nowadays. It also not listener-friendly, but listener-defying: this music stands in fornt of the listener and defies them to stay calm and loyal to his aesthetic criteria or join it in search of new, unnamable experiences. Defiance is what the listener has to expect from Doctor Nerve's offering, and so they must face this music as a soldier on the forntline. The psychotic counterpoints and vocalizations of the opener 'Splinter' set the rules quite clearly for the listener: more than a prologue or an overture, this one is a real "love me or leave me" statement. The guitar- bass-drum set is very solidly traced on the tracks of punchy rock, while the remaining instruments (reeds, vibes) display a neurotic orchestral amalgam which brings us memories of Zappa's most bizarre passages of his early 70s albums. The same goes for the very brief 'NerveWare No. 1', which is mainly a bridge between the opener and 'NerveWare No. 2', which brings a more majestic vibe to the band's overall deconstructive experimentation. The jazz thing is more pronounced on 'NerveWare 2', and that's when the Henry Cow similarities stay in the wide open, albeit with an important difference: the Henry Cow that created side 2 of "Unrest" and the whole of "In Praise of Learning" gave crucial preference to initial improv and then built musical ideas from it, while Doctor Nerve sticks to a sense of orchestral unit around compositions that intend to defy the conventions of melody, harmony, tempo and cadence. Although both approaches may seem similar in its respective chaotic outcomes, the fact is that Doctor Nerve's ideology is focused on the use of control to both ordain and preserve the chaos created from the avantgarde point of view. All three 'NerveWare' pieces were composed via a computerized musical program, so here's the most extreme proof of what I'm trying to explain: a carefully rational approach to the counterculture insatisfaction inherent to the freedom of avantgarde. Now that I've mentioned it, 'NerveWare No. 3' bears a similar spirit to that of 'No. 2' with a rockier vibe. 'Armed Observation' and 'Pain Waits Until 5 P.M.' are the two least unscrutable pieces in the album, still remaining challenging and not listener-friendly. 'Money where Your Mouth is', 'Frogs where Your Mouth is' and 'Did Unna Die?' are bizarre little examples of how a marriage of angst-driven punk-rock and academic music can be effective. The same goes for 'Trash', a track that equals the incendiary effect of the two aforesaid numbers, albeit with a more stylish approach. Under its explicitely provocative title, 'Our Soldiers are Soft as Babies and They Squander their Stipends A-Whoring' bears additional similarities to the French version of RIO (Univers Zero, Present): this is the right occasion to pay close attention to the exquisiteness of the ensamble, an essential feature that may pass generally unnoticed by the unprepared listener. Actually, this track's climax has to be one of the album's highlights. Well, this albums includes 44 minimal passages that are left for the listener to sequence as they like. This sort of interaction is common ground within the early 20th Century artistic movements, and remains a recurrent motif in many postmodern art events currently. Are you a RIO-or-Zheul freak? If so, did you ever wonder how Henry Cow would have been like during this post-grunge era of rock? Or did you ever wonder how Ruins would be like if they had less vocals and more instruments? Pick this or any other Doctor Nerve item and you'll be in awe of what you'll find. Concerning this specific album, I regarding as a catalogue of sheer weird excellence.

This, the third Doctor Nerve album, has a recording quality much better than the previous two studio albums, and, as usual, the music and artistry is spectacular. But this one loses point for a few details. First a few of the songs have vocals. By this I mean someone shouting at the top of their lungs. Second, the "Nerve Event" experiment. The last 44 tracks on the CD are very short snippets, notes and riffs, meant to be shuffled and played randomly. Since each has a second or two of dead space at either end, no matter how you shuffle them, they do not become a musical piece as intended, but remain a series of tiny edits.

But the bulk of the music is amazing. Much of it was composed with the assistance of a program created by guitarist Nick Didkovsky. There is even a "computer generated vibraphone piece which composes itself during the act of performance". I'm not sure how it was done, but it is an interestin concept. And a great listen. If you are not faint of heart.