Excepter

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More About

• The Beatles
• Animal Collective
• Dance

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I have already penned (for other publications) nearly 20 pages of hyperbolic praise for and obsessive overanalyzing of the psychedelic sounds created by this New York quintet. I have previously called these musicians "transhuman performance artists," "cybershamans," and -- get this -- "a sneak preview at the next evolutionary leap awaiting the human race." Dr. Leary once dropped acid, listened to Rubber Soul, and proclaimed the Beatles to be "angels descended from heaven." Well, my zealously millennial rants about Excepter are running a close second to those screeds. The band's latest disc, Throne, consists solely of a 33-minute, gloriously hypnotic ritual-meditation that launches my mind into outer fucking space. What we're dealing with here is a quark-level fusion (and ultimate transcendence) of acid rock, experimental noise, early-'80s industrial, vocal-based world music, and electronic dance music. Excepter -- more than any other band on Earth save Animal Collective -- has cultivated a means (via hot-wired electronics) to invoke the profoundly blissed-out, repetitive beauty endemic to great dance music by utilizing techniques typically employed by live-action, improvisational rock and jazz musicians. This music is both extremely challenging and totally gorgeous, and that's the fundamental reason why I fail as a critic when writing about it. I'm sorry.