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Golden Palominos- Dead Inside ©1999 Pete Darling |
| Listening to the Dead Inside album can be a very difficult experience, but it is very important that you do it. People seem to have different responses upon hearing this album for the first time... tears, moments of speechlessness, or the occasional bewildered stare, followed by the question "What the Fuck is this?" For people who get it, though, the emotion behind that first response seems to be almost universal- the feeling that poet/vocalist Nicole Blackman has, somehow, gotten inside your head and managed to put into words those absolute truths of your existence in a way you didn't know was possible. It's an intensely personal experience which is often exhilarating, often painful. |
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| Nicole manages to capture the essence of that black emptiness most of us feel inside of us. She distills that feeling into poems about victimization, the alienating effects of the single scene and the frequent self-destructiveness of life in the City. That terrified-yet-bored, excited-yet-sick-to-death feeling that is so difficult for the rest of us to put into language, Nicole has somehow succeeded in transcribing with the clarity of a road map etched on the insides of our skulls. On other tracks, she shows us with scalpel-sharp precision the core of our souls- what longing feels like, what desire feels like, what loss feels like. Her words are often desperate but never hopeless. They are stars by which lost travelers can navigate when they have no other means of finding home. |
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| The music is spot-on, even by Bill Laswell and Anton Fier's very high standards. (This is How it Feels, Golden Palominos 1993 album, was also a groundbreaking release). They do amazing things in the low-frequency range, from crushing heavy ambiences to driving rhythm. Industrial (in the original sense of the word) samples and effects add a grating edge to the tracks. They are used often and to good effect. |
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| Dead Inside
was released in 1996. It's taken three years to write this review, mostly
because of the difficulty in finding suitable language to convey what a
transformative experience this album can be. If I've succeeded in anything
by writing this, I'll have convinced at least one of you to find it and
listen to it. It's very important that you do.
Comments to the Reviewer
Thanks to Chank Diesel for Nicole Blackman's handwriting font. |