The borderline between freedom and madness is constantly shifting.When John Lawrence elected to leave [a]Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci[/a], then with a new record contract on the table, he found himself free to follow his own personal muse. If by becoming involved in the British music scene, [a]Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci[/a] sold out to their cultural oppressors, ‘Infinity Chimps’ sees Lawrence doing his best to sell back in again, avoiding the problem of whether to sing in Welsh or English by denying any allegiance to language whatsoever.
That the keyboard-fixated products of this process are mildly incomprehensible should come as no surprise. ‘Swallow’ and ‘Pedal Steel’ meander into the same kind of twisted avant-country rock as Dave Pajo‘s Papa M project, while the cinematic ‘Talvin’ could almost be a piece of Barry Adamson‘s soundtrack-[I]noir[/I] music, but elsewhere, there’s nothing consistent enough to be able to identify any coherent direction.
‘Infinity Chimps’ is a weird record, then, and unapologetically so – but whether it is consistent or imaginative enough to qualify as a great record, or even a good one, rather depends on where you think the borderline between avant-garde and New Age lies. A bold personal statement of musical freedom, perhaps, but one too dark and dysfunctional for most of us to have any hope of understanding.