Send "Dead C, The " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 It's funny that, out of 30-plus releases over 23 years, the Dead C decided to call this one Patience. Many of their other records have actually required patience-- both from the New Zealand trio and their audience. Take "Speederbot" from 2000's The Dead C, which drifts and wanders through a half-hour of stubborn noise, or "Garage" from 2007's Future Artists, 20 minutes of humming distortion and loose guitar (all good things, by the way). Patience, on the other hand, opens with the attention-grabbing "Empire". Surging steadily forward with a simple beat, churning metal/psych riffs, and sheets of whirring feedback, it evokes classic Dead C page-turners like "Helen Said This" and "Bitcher".Come to think of it, maybe Patience refers to what the album rewards if you've been waiting for the Dead C to return the rock-rubbing style of those songs. For such followers, the trio represents a unique step sideways from rock convention. On landmarks like 1992's Harsh 70's Reality and 1995's The White House, they split the rock atom to preserve the fun parts-- momentum, guitar heft, art-punk attitude, outsider edge-- and blow up the rest. What emerged was a sound that could swing and lurch, hang together and fall apart, and rock insistently while grinding unreservedly. The logical extension of those 90s detonations was abstract noise, and the band did some great work in that realm in the 2000s. But, as it had begun to on 2008's Secret Earth, the rock side regains the upper hand throughout these four motoring tracks. Which is not to say that you can sing along. In the Dead C dictionary, "rock" is more a translation than a definition, and besides, there aren't even any vocals here. That's a rarity-- Michael Morley's moan usually arrives somewhere along the band's far-flung journeys, but here it's eschewed in favor of creating structure and atmosphere with morphing sonics. In that sense, Patience's closest parallel is the underappreciated 1996 live album, Repent. Both albums move like storm clouds, with Morley's guitar and Bruce Russell's noise riding Robbie Yeats' primal drumming as if it were laying tracks. But this album is also open and spacious, and remarkably energetic for a band that's been at it this long-- just check out "Shaft", a five-minute blast that could pass for a teen band's uneducated, unjaded punk. Patience closes with a track that might seem to contradict my back-to-the-rock thesis. "South" starts with seven minutes of slow chords and amorphous din, more like lost radio transmissions than music. But it eventually coalesces into a sticky beat, before descending into echoing feedback that somehow swings. In its own way, "South" rocks as solidly as the three tracks that preceded it. But it also serves as a nice reminder that the Dead C not only do a fine job of destroying rock, they're pretty good at sifting through the rubble, too....full text |
| Dustedmagazine |
| It’s safe to say that Dusted has a thing for The Dead C. The New Zealand dirt-rockers have been described in this forum as “conflating punk and psychedelic release through basement noise-crust” and ”a burning garbage truck that’s falling apart as it careens wildly out of control.”. And they were the subject of this anthem from Michael Crumsho. (Get your damn hands up.) So, if you feel like we do about The Dead C, it should delight you to know that Patience is… wait for it… another Dead C record. And a good one! None of the arty, minimalist pretensions of the much-hated ’07 dispatch Future Artists (which an anonymous colleague memorably knocked for its “goofy avant vibes,” and which, for the record, your reporter rather dug). Something similar, in the galvanizing, slowly unwinding, 16-minute opener “Empire,” to the band’s previous awesomely failed attempts at just rocking out. But that’s something that’s dropped in time for the throttling (we’re talking “Bombs Over Baghdad” throttling) “Shaft” (the title makes me giggle – sorry) and the slow, melancholy hiss of “South.” And with that, Patience is over. It lasts all of 38 minutes. Even if you’re not getting off on it, very little patience is required. The aforementioned unnamed colleague commented, also, thusly: “I find no reason why this record should exist.” OK. It’s not the easiest thing to defend a band that’s been around for decades, influencing dozens of brilliant youngsters, now just doing its job. But I’ve seriously enjoyed listening to this. Most rock bands are founded on a sense of romanticized rebellion that’s going to yield severely diminishing returns. The Dead C was founded on a fierce, cynical, hard-to-figure intelligence that made its members pariahs in their poppy homeland, and has only grown sharper with age. Patience is nothing exactly new, but it’s as smart and savvy as ever, smarter and more savvy than Harsh ’70s Reality or any of that. The warped power chords in “Empire” cut as deep as anything The Dead C has done, and the sizzurp negative-psychedelia of “South” may as well be the band’s definitive statement. Genius gets old and dies, but misanthropy never mellows with age....full text |
| Lolive-music |
| The Dead C are essentials in experimental music. The New Zealand trio have been a prolific force since 1987, releasing material every year since then. Numbers aside, what makes The Dead C so enthralling is their style of experimentation: the majority of their work is improvisational-- certain albums may have a written piece here and there, often reiterating one of the band's best songs "Sky", but they're often surrounded by drawn out, noise-infested jam sessions. Their way of improvising is deceitful; it's difficult to decide whether they're proposing a new form of psychedelic exploration or drunkenly stumbling over their instruments. Following the same trend as Secret Earth, The Dead C's latest album Patience consists of four tracks, two of which going over the 10-minute mark. However, Patience has a complete absence of vocals as opposed to its predecessor, beneficially emphasizing the improvisational aura. The 16-minute opener "Empire" is the most accustomed to a definable rhythm as the album gets: Robbie Yeat's drums are slowly pounding away, building momentum for the shuffling fills, Michael Morley spaces out his guitar chords with resonating amp hums, and Bruce Russel's feedback excursions seem completely of their own but are at the same time reactionary to the pace. The Dead C don't have a leading member-- instead, each of them have equal talent and are on the same level with each other; a perfect improvisational group. On Patience, The Dead C prove that complexity and technicality aren't mandatory to attain an interesting form of musicianship. The formless interplay on "Federation" and the closer "South" allows the band to conjure up some untraceable noises using what they have at hand: cymbal clatter, gently plucked notes and harsh, squealing electronics. When each of the members perform within their own separate mindsets, their best elements are merged together to create a stunning, unique blend of ideas that seems almost cosmic, and the direct-to-tape fidelity only accentuates this....full text |
Dead C, The lyrics
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