If you’ve ever thought that hard rock would be improved by the addition of party razzers* then this is the song for you.
That might sound like I’m trying to polish a novelty turd of a tune, but Dynamo, recorded by Thule for their second and final album, (321 Normal 2) has grown on me the more that I’ve heard it. If you read the Discogs or John Peel Wiki pages on them, they promise a banquet of eclecticism, with their music encompassing electronica, dub and ambient, while groups such as Kraftwerk, Tackhead and Chrome are all mentioned as influences. To my untrained ears, Dynamo owes more to Bauhaus and Joy Division - they even manage to rhyme the words control and dynamo for goodness sake!
It all starts out with a scratchy bassline followed by similarly scratchy guitar picking. I’ve always been a sucker for musical flourishes that sound like something eroding before your ears. And once the track gets started, it’s played in a key which dominates the environment so completely, it’s a struggle not to be drawn in. I’d rhapsodise even more about Dynamo if we could hear the lyrics more clearly. What I can make out from it makes the Joy Division comparisons even clearer given that they seem to be barking out a list of Ian Curtis approved bullet points: Obsession…isolation….etc. Alongside that is the post-punk ethos of embracing the mechanical/technical and working that into a crossover with the organic. I think Thule also managed to align this with early 1990s musical mores. For example, I originally heard the word, insulator - at 1:15 - as Catch you later, which given that it followed a line that sounded like it was saying, Young and tender had me wondering whether this was acting as some kind of deconstruction of Beverly Hills 90210 youth culture, but I’m more inclined to believe that, with a dynamo being something that converts mechanical energy into electrical energy, the song is instead targeting the slacker generations and by extension, it projects a frustration that the angst and fury in grunge music isn’t being converted into something more positive and constructive. The squealing party razzers evoke the sense of an attempt to summon up energy, which in keeping with the spirit of the time, eventually peters out in a fit of audiopique.
That’s what I believe anyway, but I can’t be sure, so in the final reckoning, Dynamo ends up as a half-masterpiece.
Video courtesy of subunitfour.
All lyrics are copyright of their authors.
*The party razzers are probably broken saxophone reeds.
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