Customer Reviews

Suspension & Displacement

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Djam Karet are a Los Angeles progressive rock quartet founded in 1984. Their first two releases, "No Commercial Potential" (1985) and "The Ritual Continues" (1987) were private cassettes of totally improvised music. In 1989, Djam Karet gave us their first proper "composed" release with "Reflections From The Firepool." That album highlighted their two primary influences - Pink Floyd and King Crimson.

But although "Firepool" was a triumph, it was also a little schizophrenic. The savage blasts of "Red" era King Crimson did not sit all that well with the spaced-out ambience of "Wish You Were Here" Pink Floyd. And so in 1991, Djam Karet split the two musical avenues into two complimentary releases: the guitar based, metallic "Burning the Hard City" and the quieter, textured "Suspension and Displacement." Until recently, both these albums were difficult to locate, but with Cuneiform Record's decision to reissue them, many more people have a chance to enjoy this exceptional band. Both "Burning the Hard City" and "Suspension and Displacement" were excellent releases and the latter, in my opinion, was the better of the two.

"Suspension and Displacement" is wholly instrumental and it emphasises the band's Pink Floyd tendencies. But as with "Burning the Hard City" Djam Karet do not settle for simply aping one of their major sources of inspiration. This is no more evident than in the opening track "Dark Clouds, No Rain." Here, the band combine Floydian soundscapes with the work of Fripp and Eno. (The weird opening "drone" on this track recalls "The Heavenly Music Corporation.") As this 12 minute piece continues, ethnic influences begin to make their presence felt. The song becomes a collage of different musical sounds, ranging from exotic percussion to acoustic guitar. A compelling and highly original track, and the same can be said for the rest of the album.

Similarly, the sampling is fascinating, to say the least. Take the track "Consider Figure Three." The band somehow manage to enfold a medical school lecture (seriously!) into the piece, and the varieties of sampling elsewhere are far from ordinary. The band's exotic instrumentation and sampling are rounded off with several acoustic guitar segments, but on the whole, the electric guitar is banished to "Burning the Hard City."

So far as songwriting is concerned, Djam Karet have yet to better this album. Musical ideas are developed convincingly throughout. It is this attention to songcraft that sets this album far apart from most other ambient/new age releases. So far as progressive rock was concerned, this album did enter genuinely new territory.

If you enjoy this album, it will certainly be worth your time and effort tracking down their 1994 release "Collaborator" which, with the help of supporting musicians Kit Watkins and Steve Roach, follows through on some of the musical paths hinted at on "Suspension and Displacement." Hopefully, it will not be long before Cuneiform Records reissues that album too.

The music on this disk was originally recorded and released in 1991; Cuneiform Records has now made this and a hard-rock recording the band made at the same time (Burning the Hard City, a rather banal bit of hard rock instrumental music that is quite forgettable) available once again. In contrast to that style, Suspension and Displacement is ambient and dream-like in its sonority. It is hard to believe that a hard-rock band could make such a recording, but they did it, and they did it well.

The music has a pulse that is quite engaging, and enough inter-channel phase-shifting and so forth going on to make it interesting to listen to on a big system. For someone who likes to try things a bit off the beaten path, this is well worth auditioning. If your curiosity about Burning the Hard City gets the best of you and you decide to purchase Suspension and Displacement's "schizophrenic identical twin" (the liner notes proclaim about the two recordings that "one does not exist without the other"), don't say I didn't warn you.

About as good as their other CD that I've recently added to my collection - 'Collaborator' {see my review}. Maybe it's just me but 'Suspension & Displacement' seems to be a bit more guitar oriented. No complaint there. Tunes I dug the most were the Robert Fripp-like "Dark Clouds, No Rain", their good guitar-layered composition "Erosion" (maybe the disc's best cut), the almost Pink Floyd-ish "Severed Moon" and "Gordon's Basement". Really like the way Djam Karet fully employs fuzz-drone guitar, ambient textures and intricate New Age keyboard work into their music. If you want to experience the 'real' alternative sounds available out there, go to the band's My Space. You won't regret it.

I had picked up Burning The Hard City as my first Djam CD. I was disappointed with it. I read that Suspension & Displacement was the Yin to Burning The Hard City's Yang. I took a chance and picked up Suspension & Displacement. It wouldn't call it completely ambient. At least not Brian Eno ambient. I'd call it right brain music. It's well produced with very creative distinct songs.