Review: UNKNOWN INSTRUCTORS

Unknown Instructors
Funland (Smog Veil)

This neither respects industry-proffered strictures nor reflects appropriate sympathies.

Good.

Ambitiousness of this scope is not found on top marketing charts. Too "self-indulgent," says
Suit One. Too "experimental," agrees Suit Two.

Besides, holds the A&R chorus, tilted atonality that kicks aside standard maps and mass-accessibility formulas to dance on uncharted soils has never known numerically significant embrace.

Of course, self-indulgence is not necessarily a negative. Of what benefit to anyone is the stifled imagination?

Contributors Mike Watt, George Hurley, Joe Baiza, Dan McGuire, Raymond Pettibon, and David Thomas follow without inhibiting commercial heed the muse's seductive siren into leisurely and notion-laden episodes.

Only through bold experimentation can unlikely concepts be unwrapped and assembled. Experiments do not always succeed, but they sometimes do -- with occasionally startling appropriateness.

One at once respects the daring and is impressed by the realizations. High-minded intentions that might otherwise fall are well-raised by agile interpretation. Musicians assembled for this work are of a lofty caliber; their expressions animate creative ideation, giving it practical form.

It is true that no compositions present lend themselves to ringtone-excerpting. Just as it also is so -- and with Funland, again asserted -- that such is not art's purpose.

Recommended Maji Yabai, Later That Night, Frownland, C'mon, No Chirping.

- DC Larson