Label: Staalplaat Format: CD
At first seemingly a strange departure for Robin Storey in his Rapoon guise, The Alien Question starts out as a series of simple sound loops and harmonium chords accompanying the spoken words of alien ambassador Hoh Krll. The increasingly paranoiac ideas which Krll outlines are of course familiar to almost everyone from Western popular culture’s obsession with all things alien and Grey (or from Betelgeuse, allegedly, or maybe in fact Mars). As the album develops, ethnodelic tracks like “Waddi Haj”, “Give Us Dub” and “Never Called NJ12″ emerge in more familiar style, layering North African/Middle Eastern sound and vocal samples into engaging dubs of camel-riding bass and cycling percussion, with little apparent relation to the visitors in question – though the latter brings back the now-familiar outline of international conspiracies to the forefront.
Perhaps Storey is drawing attention to the wealth of fascination to be drawn from so-called exotic cultures outside the sphere of most Euro-American experience, without recourse to intrusions from the extra-terrestrial. While …’s manic and detailed allegations about the arrival and subsequent dominance of the Betelguesians could also be the information being made available for either the puropses of entertainment or warning, it’s also equally possible that there is more interest in the tonal, almost droning, qualities of the voice as it becomes decontextualised by the variety of rhythms and ambiences circling around and below it, becoming in the process another part of the soundscape.
There’s much to support this latter view – the words become increasingly cut up, pasted and rehashed, as with other works which draw on the voice of a charismatic raconteur of cultural marginalia (e.g. Gus van Sant‘s hypnotic rewiring of William Burroughs into The Elvis Of Letters). As the CD develops, orchestral and/or choral fragments take the fore, or layered ambient keyboards with pulsing beats, overwhelming and subduing the text, making a continuous recapitulation and rephrasing of the basic motifs. By the conclusing “I Don’t Expect Anyone…”, everything has become almost operatic, slipping off with a flourish of trailing choral echo. What Do You Suppose? has much to recommend it on many levels, possessed as it is of much that rewards either simple Ambient chilling or the examination of the words of a slightly deranged UFOlogical phenomenon.
-Antron S. Meister-
