The Fall’s aggression was formal disassembly of rock, not mere force
Evidence
Yet the violence was not a matter of force alone. Even when the record’s dual-drummer attack is at its most poundingly vicious, the violence is formal as much as physical. Rock form is disassembled before our ears. It seems to keep time according to some system of spasms and lurches learned from Beefheart. Something like “Deer Park” — a whistle-stop tour of London circa 82 sandblasted with “Sister Ray”-style white noise — screams and whines as if it is about to fall apart at any moment. The “bad production” was nothing of the sort. The sound could be pulverisingly vivid at times: the moment when the bass and drums suddenly loom out of the miasma at the start of “Winter” is breathtaking, and the double-drum tattoo on “Who Makes the Nazis?” fairly leaps out of the speakers. This was the space rock of Can and Neu! smeared in the grime and mire of the quotidian, recalling the most striking image from The Quatermass Xperiment: a space rocket crash-landed into the roof of a suburban house. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1161
Categorization
- XREF: The Quatermass crash-landing image parallels the recurring ‘thing from outside breaking into the mundane’ motif found across science fiction and horror criticism. — connects to: The Fall made bass the lead instrument and inverted white-rock values — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1107; Joy Division and the Fall represent opposite ends of Romantic modernism — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1108; The Fall’s vocal polyphony was mediated through borrowed styles like Lewis’s telegraphic headlines — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1113 (+5 more)
Broader Connections
- The manner of demolition, not just the demolition, destroyed a community’s will to resist
#complicates(0.85) — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 3728 - Violence leaves its object forcibly transformed, not merely injured physically.
#expands(0.80) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1817 - Knowledge after the Fall condemns humans to endless labor and awareness of death
#qualifies(0.75) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 177