Powered by Google
Home
Listings
Editors' Picks
News
Music
Movies
Food
Life
Arts + Books
Rec Room
Moonsigns
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Personals
Adult Personals
Classifieds
Adult Classifieds
- - - - - - - - - - - -
stuff@night
FNX Radio
Band Guide
MassWeb Printing
- - - - - - - - - - - -
About Us
Contact Us
Advertise With Us
Work For Us
Newsletter
RSS Feeds
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Webmaster
Archives



sponsored links
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
PassionShop.com
Sex Toys - Adult  DVDs - Sexy  Lingerie


   
  E-Mail This Article to a Friend

Thinking person’s metal
Isis discover Panopticon, and Diecast soldier on
BY SEAN RICHARDSON

Nobody has ever accused Isis of being stupid. Since their emergence as part of the nascent Boston metalcore scene of the late 1990s, they’ve always been known as a "thinking person’s band." But they’ve never sent fans scrambling for the reference books with an album title — until now. The group’s current CD, Panopticon (Ipecac), takes its name from the influential prison model of 18th-century philosopher Jeremy Bentham. Isis frontman Aaron Turner stumbled across the concept when his girlfriend was reading the classic critique of it by 20th-century philosopher Michel Foucault. He was surprised by how relevant it was to his everyday life.

Over the phone from the road, Turner is happy to explain why. "The Panopticon is an architectural figure designed to allow a minimum number of people to watch a maximum number of other people. Also, it implies that the people being watched never know whether they’re being surveilled or not. I think that’s a feeling a lot of citizens in this country have now with the introduction of the Patriot Act. Even before that, just a growing suspicion that the government and corporations are poking around in our business more than we would like. The Internet has sort of facilitated that in the sense that a lot of people allow their private information to move around in that framework. You never are sure where it’s going or who might be seeing it. The Patriot Act is something that moves us a little closer to that Orwellian, dystopian future where Big Brother is constantly watching."

Turner doesn’t spell any of that out in the songs — or if he does, it’s hard to tell over the din, and Panopticon provides no lyric sheet. But he does include excerpts from Foucault and Bentham in the CD booklet, along with a pair of contemporary extrapolations on their theories. And the packaging adds to the surveillance theme with a series of aerial photographs that were taken by Turner on a commercial flight out of Oakland. "I tried to get them before we got too far up in the air, so you could still get the details of the landscape. When I took them, it wasn’t with the intention of using them for the record, but it all fell into place that way."

Isis first hooked up with Ipecac, the brainchild of Faith No More frontman and avant-rock tastemaker Mike Patton, in 2002 for their previous album, Oceanic. Panopticon marks the first time they recorded in Los Angeles, where Turner says he moved for two primary reasons: the change of scenery and the opportunity to reunite with Mark Thompson, his partner in crime at the Hydra Head label. The disc finds the band at their sprawling finest: they jam through seven songs in one hour, covering a dizzying array of emotional peaks and valleys. It’s a logical progression from Oceanic, with a little more vocal melody than usual.

This Friday, Isis are scheduled to play a homecoming show downstairs at the Middle East in Central Square. The group are also about to release their first video, an arty clip for "In Fiction" directed by Josh Graham (Dillinger Escape Plan). Turner says they had to cut about four minutes off the album version of the song, which is as eerie as it is weighty, to reduce costs. "We managed to get about five and a half minutes without destroying the song. It’s not ideal, but we’d rather make a few concessions than not do it at all. It’s not a performance video. I just gave the director a general concept of the record, and we talked about a few movies I thought were relevant. After that, he pretty much ran with it. We’ve always directed the production of our records in a very hands-on way, so it was a little hard letting go of control. But we were lucky to end up with a good result."

page 1  page 2 

Issue Date: December 3 - 9, 2004
Click here for the Cellars by Starlight archive
Back to the Music table of contents

  E-Mail This Article to a Friend
 









about the phoenix |  advertising info |  Webmaster |  work for us
Copyright © 2005 Phoenix Media/Communications Group