Compare, Contrast, Consider
(In Which We Analyze Analogues)
Cromagnon vs. black metal
One of my favorite musical discovery moments is when someone finds an obscure recording that accidentally presages an entire genre that was years or even decades away from actually coming into existence. For example a few years ago, English producer Sir Pixalot posted that a boss theme from the Super Nintendo / Sega Genesis game Wolverine: Adamantium Rage sounded a lot like a grime track, despite the fact that was written nearly a decade before Youngstar’s “Pulse X,” widely cited as the track that spawned the genre.1 It’s a bit like the old thought experiment about infinite monkeys eventually typing Shakespeare. With all of the musicians creating music all over the world, is it really that surprising that someone happened to put together a certain set of sounds even before they became codified into a genre?
Of course, it’s still disconcerting to actually come across. The most recent experience I’ve had with this comes from a forum post I randomly came across while looking for something else. The post asked for help identifying a song from the sixties that presaged black metal, and (because the internet is occasionally not awful) someone replied with a link almost immediately. The track the poster was looking for was “Caledonia” by Cromagnon, the opening track from their sole record Orgasm. Naturally, I was intrigued. Orgasm (later reissued as Cave Rock) was originally released in 1969, beating Venom’s genre-christening “Black Metal” by thirteen years or so. Hell, it beat Black Sabbath’s self-titled debut by a year. Forget black metal; this track came out before metal was a genre.
Compared with the rest of Orgasm, “Caledonia” stands out starkly. Shockingly, it’s probably the album’s poppiest track. The rest of the record hews toward modern acts like Black Dice, Prurient, or Animal Collective at it’s earliest and least pop-oriented moments. To put it simply, it’s the sort of music that’s born of the question “What’s the most interesting noise I can make?”
“Caledonia” feels like an attempt to make an actual pop song. There’s, like, a rhythm and verses and rhymed words and everything! Compositionally, it’s probably closer to a folk song than an actual metal track, but it’s amazing how closely its arrangement presages the aesthetics that would even converge to become black metal. After some easy listening radio samples, the song launches into a hammering beat overlaid with blown-out guitar ripples, a blaring bagpipe riffs, and whisper-rasped vocals. The lo-fi gutter drums and guitar feedback, are obvious hallmarks of black metal, but the other elements work out a kind of convergent evolution. The cutting timbre and lo-fi buzz of the bagpipes wind up as a weird approximation of tremolo picked guitars, while the strange duet of vocals combine hushed whisper and a strained yowl into something that sounds strangely akin to a shriek.
Again, you’d probably never mistake it for like an Emperor b-side or whatever, but it’s still a strangely uncanny listen. Like the musical equivalent of finding an Australian cockatoo in a European painting from the 15th century.
- TWG
1. Check out more pre-grime here.