Oneida Preteen Weaponry by: Ed Butler Wed:03-Sep-08 Label: Jagjaguwar Year: 2008 WB rating 47 out of 100

Oneida have certainly refined their affinity for tribal rhythms which have their own primal appeal, in a rape-and-pillage kind of way. That these beats are at the forefront of one of the most sonically confronting albums, their LP Preteen Weaponry, in recent years in no way diminishes their slothfully thunderous impact.

And, by God, does this album need impact. Remove Kid Millions' bass-heavy thuds and Preteen Weaponry devolves into a mess of hallucinogenic dirges, with little direction or even appeal. Distorted, hazy, and droning sounds cover every second of the album's 39 minutes, from scratchy guitars to white-noise hiss, with the overall effect of having the listener occasionally rendered mildly nauseous. The curious thing is that is feels utterly intentional.

The second track, in particular, is guilty of this; the heaving, swaying grind of guitars being willfully misused actually being capable of turning a normally cast-iron stomach somewhat sideways. For the record, there are three tracks on the album, each sitting on or around the 13-minute mark. They bear the stunningly imaginative title theme of 'Preteen Weaponry Part 1', 'Preteen Weaponry Part 2' and 'Preteen Weaponry Part 3', which is a, probably unintentional, nod to Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells – which suffers from a similar overburden of pretension and lack of melody.

Of course, the album is not merely an exercise in affliction, but in experimentation, which must always be encouraged, however far the mark is missed. The opening track's thumping rhythms are undeniably affecting, and the closer, once again, relies on interesting electronic/organic beats to underscore what is essentially a cavalcade of assorted laptop-induced effects.

Oneida are routinely tossed into a bundle of bands that can be somewhat unadventurously catalogued as 'Krautrock', lining themselves alongside the undisputed masters of art-noise, Germany's Can. However, where Can excelled, Oneida fall down. On Can's masterpiece, Tago Mago from 1970, the flights of queasy experimentalism took place as interludes between genuinely interesting songs, driving repetition and elusive melodies. Here, Oneida essentially sound like an out-takes recording of all the bits that Can saw fit not to include. It's easy to imagine the band members standing around a mixing desk, scratching their heads and saying "Why the fuck is there so much in the way of music interludes?" If only Oneida possessed such self-editing skills.
Intended as the first in a 'triptych' of albums (the second installment, Rated O, is due for release early 2009), Preteen Weaponry certainly asks more questions about its successors' sounds than offers answers regarding future direction, and that's probably just the way Oneida like it, professional contrarians that they are. And while this may sound like a relatively negative review, it must always be borne in mind that bands like Oneida are, at their most conservative, stunningly polarising, and for every scathing attack, there is a glowing commendation, regaling the talent with which they twist sound in new directions.