Press

Part prophet of doom, part musketeer, The Subliminator painted an almost Messianic figure as he sauntered to the stage dressed all in black, his face obscured by long black hair and sunglasses. Taking the third, sixth, ninth, and 12th songs, he used an array of five optical theramins to erect densely layered loops in a matter of seconds. After establishing a framework of electronic beats and glitchy digital effects, he would record a background of guttural groans, a pratice which called to mind the film scores of Alejandro Jodorowsky. Only after these entrancing sonic structures had effectively seeped into the listener’s head, however, did The Subliminator begin his real work, spouting enraged, socially conscious spoken word poetry with the Vietnam-era fervor of The Monks. Touching on capitalist greed, social injustice, religious hypocrisy, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and at one point playing both parts in an imagined conversation between George W.
Bush and Dick Cheney, The Subliminator is aptly named to say the least. Like an Alan Ginsburg acid dream brought to vivid life, his self-serious commitment to this provocative material brought a welcome sincerity to a poetic form that too often slides into the cheesy.

Ignoring the crowd and distancing himself from the other bands for most of the night, this man did not suggest water, and while it was never explicity stated, I’m not sure he intended to. His focused outrage against the Bush administration and the Iraq war, not to mention his jet black attire and noticeable nonparticipation in the liquid cominglings of Tunabunny and Box Devils, characterized The Subliminator as an ominous spot of oil drifting atop the surface of the ATHICAn Sea. In so doing, his performance could not help but invoke the horrifying images that have been coming in from the Gulf of Mexico these past few weeks as the Deepwater Horizon spill continues on its indiscriminate path of drifting death. In winding down a show so brilliantly curated around the often devastating effects of water, The Subliminator reminded the crowd that these tragedies extend beyond the decoarted walls of the ATHICA art gallery into people’s homes and lives, and
that without vigilance against corporate greed, environmental devastation, and national oil-lust, we could all wake up one day underwater.” – David Fitzgerald

The Subliminator will be performing at Flicker in Athens on Wednesday, June 30th and at Kavarna in Oakhurst on Thursday, July 1st.

David Fitzgerald
Flagpole

Ex-Spaceseed wordsmith/gizmoist Serson Brannen explores the outer limits of high tech spoken word space art on Recalibrated, and as the new high priest of the temple of cosmic slam poetry he fills a void that's been sadly vacant since the heady acid daze of Robert Calvert, Daevid Allen, and Gilli Smyth. Reminiscent in some ways of Nik Turner's Xitintotoday (though without the Egyptian mythos) and Mother Gong's more overtly poetic forays into spiritualized psychedelic rock speak, Recalibrated often sounds like Jack Kerouac teleported to the 21st Century and loaded into a Macintosh. Brannen's verbal gymnastics, especially on pieces like "The Lone Gunman Theory" and "Seduction," mix conspiracy theory and alien abduction with inner visions of the apocalypse to come. Accompanied by theremin, an assortment of processors, and some occasional synthesizer and synthetic percussion, Brannen conducts hypnotic séances that at times morph into electronic ragas for Shivas of the cyber age. This is especially the case on "Alabama Meltdown," the most innervating of the nine tracks on Recalibrated. Primal electronic rhythms from the silicon jungle power Brannen's demonic rantchant through the secret history of an alien invasion on American soil. It's a harrowing 12-minute mini-epic through a surreal alternate reality that's guaranteed to put you into a soild-state trance without having to resort to any of your favorite psychoactive chemicals. One can only imagine what a live Subliminator gig must be like, but if Recalibrated is any indication, it must be a real space owwwwwwtttttt!

Charles Van de Kree
Aural Innovations

One guy who comes totally out of left field is The Subliminator, an older hippy guy from Decatur, Georgia. And I am talking fried brain acid biker hippy style. He plays these five theremin things, with a boomerang pedal, and some spoken vocals. A lot of his songs end up being kind of technoish, but once again, it's a hippy biker version of techno. Fucking sick! His album Recalibrated (Scared/Stickfigure Records) is quite good, but a little disappointing after his live show. Keep your ears peeled, oh yeah, I think he's on myspace too...

Stan
Blastitude

At first listen, the uninitiated may find The Subliminators’ Rake completely offputting.

Its mélange of sound, hollowedout spoken word delivery and abstract music are absolutely indifferent to the common mosaic of mainstream and non-mainstream music alike. It is experimental and ambient, post-apocalyptic and spacey at the same time.

Making it past “Howl,” a zip-zap nod to Ginsberg’s poem, offers results in the form of the world flavor mood of “Shaheed,” in which ex-Spaceseed vocalist Serson Brannen offers, “But is Jerusalem more sacred than Oklahoma City? / Not to an Okie / Is Mecca more sacred than Atlanta / Not to me, Not to me.” Brannen’s words intersect calm, soothing Arabic harmonies. At times abrasive, other times harmonious, Rake is incoherent coherence, navigating mood and sound with one strong voice as narration, spouting philosophy and opinions or stories of bleakness and humanity.

Rake is a mood inducer, be it stressful or warmth. The construction of songs is built on repetition and brief musical ideas – straightforward keyboard patterns and looped vocals. Rake is a church sermon against a backdrop of ghosts in the machine, machines to build the music and a human voice delivered electrically and passionately, like synthesized humanity. The Subliminator is spoken word techno-psychedelia in the midst of the burgeoning Area Code Noise movement of modern music. While Rake is no bitter pill to swallow, it is an acquired taste, one that is fruitful to those interested in something beyond the well known verse-chorus-verse of genre music. It is futurist poetry laid against compositions made from the scraps of music’s elegy. Orwellian in feel, The Subliminator is humanism with an Atari soundtrack. (Scared Records)

Brian Tucker
Performer