Nisennenmondai: "Destination Tokyo"

This Japanese trio’s krautrock comes kaleidoscopic. Previous efforts have etched grooves in the ground with a fucking backhoe, scraping distorted fuzz like the arm of a big dumb mechanism up and down the music’s span. The group was all strength and aggression and jerky motions. But the selfsame chug of the nine-minute “Destination Tokyo” segues with all of the consistency of a highly coordinated assembly line. It possesses a sort of beauty all its own, like the buzzsaw dance during the theme to Twin Peaks, and the planned obsolescence of previous outings is made apparent by the sleek progression the song represents.

Which isn’t to imply that this isn’t basically, problematically, maybe even self-indulgently, a Neu song, and a long and derivative one at that. While it’s got krautrock’s perfunctorily stoned tempo and emphasis on textures, outside of Fan‘s context it’s hard to know whether Nisennenmondai have got Neu’s album-wide build right. Either a prelude to one of 2009’s freshest albums, or an episodic glitch in the band’s otherwise fresh catalogue, “Destination Tokyo” won’t be able to help but be telling, no matter how faithfully uninvested it remains.