Pink Skull main man Julian Grefe has spoken in interviews about wanting to make a record in the vein of
the Chemical Brothers'
Dig Your Own Hole, citing its dynamic diversity and cohesive album-length arc as elements lacking in most contemporary dance music. It may not be the first thing that comes to mind when listening to the Philadelphia band/DJ collective's sprawling, perplexing debut album -- for one thing, it's gotten distressingly difficult to think of
the Chems as radical and experimental these days -- but that 1997 landmark is an entirely apt reference point.
Zeppelin 3 certainly doesn't sound much like the vast majority of electronic music produced this decade, with a rough-edged, acid-washed sensibility that evinces little of electro-house's garish, '80s-refracting gleam or minimal's streamlined polish. And it doesn't sound anything like
Led Zeppelin's
III (Grefe's all-time favorite album) either, although like
the Chems before them,
Pink Skull don't shy away from manifesting their love of rock music and stadium-sized excess -- Grefe's a veteran of several Philly punk bands, and there are plenty of guitars here although they're employed not so much for righteous riffage as for steady, Kraut-like slow burns ("Zing Zong," "El Topo") and ambient smears ("Ssilt.") There's also a bit of deviant hip-hop -- an enjoyable, "Apache"-cribbing remix of
Plastic Little's "Crambodia," featuring
Amanda Blank,
Spank Rock, and, improbably,
Ghostface Killah -- and a smidgen of indie folk, in the oddly truncated
Mirah guest-spot "Take Me Out Riding," which mostly feels like a missed opportunity (particularly in perhaps unfair comparison with the
Chemical Brothers' brilliant work with
Beth Orton.) Otherwise, most of the album consists of highly abstract, restively mutating, groove-based tracks that land somewhere in between breakbeat and acid house, overlaid with squelching psychedelic synths, percussion breakdowns, snatches of saxophone, and tortured, unrecognizable vocal fragments, and embellished with a dizzying array of effects. In other words, it's not far off from the bulk of
Dig Your Own Hole, although this album lacks the equivalent of a "Block Rockin' Beats" or a "Setting Sun." There are few apparent bankable hooks, although the abrasive, insistent fuzz bass lick of the break-happy "Gonzo's Cointreau" (the album's most straightforward stab at big beat revivalism -- there's even a siren!), comes close. Partly for that reason, but also because it's not quite as eclectic or as cohesive as Grefe and co. perhaps hoped,
Zeppelin 3 can be somewhat daunting and draining to listen through in its entirety. But taken in smaller doses (the ten-minute kitchen-sink workout "Bubblelog Aftermath," for instance), it can be quite effective, and it's definitely a worthwhile and promising step in the ongoing exploration and integration of dance music's interconnected past and future. ~ K. Ross Hoffman