Ball of Wax 51 Songs: Perish the Island – “My False Sense of Power”

Anyone who has ever played music will tell you that “jamming” can be a cathartic experience. Essentially, jamming is what takes place when musicians get together and have no concrete plans for what they hope to accomplish. Any of those gathered may play around with a riff, a groove, a melody, a drum pattern, a chord progression, or even a synth drone, and the others will join in gradually or all at once, trying different things until (in most cases, anyway) something coherent forms.  When it gels, the jam becomes an entity unto itself, a monolith that draws the players in and subsumes their efforts and contributions entirely. Rarely is the duration of a jam close to the brevity of the radio single; although the jam has no hard and fast rules, one can usually expect it to exceed the ten-minute length. Again, those directly involved in the catharsis of the jam will scarce notice the passage of time (an exception to this rule would be The Cure’s fantastic “Carnage Visors” from 1980, a nearly 30-minute descent into reverbed doom territory [and possible proto-inspiration for Angelo Badalamenti’s “Twin Peaks Theme” nearly a decade later] that the band swear all but destroyed them due to exhaustion and dehydration).

The major question that one would expect to be raised in the recording of the jam would be, “how do we keep the listener interested?” This question can be answered in many ways—if it is even asked by the artist. Fans of drone and ambient music will dismiss the need for change, structure, repetition, or identifiable melody in their music of choice; even I would argue that these types of music are not only pleasing (in most cases), but can be therapeutic and beneficial to many artistic and scholarly activities.

Antithetical to such an atmosphere, Perish the Island’s “My False Sense of Power” is a 21-minute exercise in slow-burning fury. A sustained D note dominates the first thirteen minutes of the song, with just enough added instrumentation to hint at the introductory chord being diminished, which is considered unstable and begs for resolution. Resolution doesn’t come in the traditional sense, but the organ tones alternate between the diminished and perfect fifth enough to keep the track from being too unsettling. I could write at length (and someday I will) about my belief in the inherent menace of D2, with its 73.42 Hz frequency and its four-and-a-half-meter wavelength, and here Perish the Island use it to great effect.  Six minutes of dread are enough to rattle the coolest of personalities, and the buzzing tones that come and go seemingly at random underpin the feeling that all is not right.

Drums begin to tease their way in, and it’s a suspended tap and subsequent triplet drag (which is repeated throughout and sounds wonderful at such a glacial pace) that finally set things in motion. The D remains the defining mark, but without the almost martial beat, it wouldn’t carry the length of the track. At some point, E is played with and sublime guitar chugs make their way about in the background. The message seems to be that the song is going to explode at any moment and the listener best be ready for it . . . but it never really happens and, for me, this is the song’s greatest strength. A two-minute reprieve just over halfway allows the listener to gather his or her wits, but it’s all for naught, because the bottom drops out and something approaching a progression soon takes over.

The extended “outro” of the song is where the fury erupts.  It’s like watching a rioting crowd in excruciating slow motion. It’s brutal and it’s terrifying and you can’t stop it. All of this without ever cranking up the volume or falling back on crushing distortion (in fact, the whole soundscape distorts slightly towards the end, but even that seems unplanned). The most fascinating part of it all is the final minute, where the bass alternates between D and A but never fully commits to helping build a major or minor; the drums have double-timed and the guitars have become more insistent, but everything that happens reinforces the sense that the listener has no authority whatsoever.  Perish the Island’s claim to a “false sense of power” is surely tongue-in-cheek, for control in this case is left entirely to the band.