Adam Pierce's Mice Parade project isn't as vilified as John McEntire's band. Listening to Collaborations , you're lulled rather than preached to, and that makes a huge public relations difference. For Collaborations , Mice Parade has called in Doug Scharin and Curtis Harvey from Him, Reich disciple and glitch-fiend Nobukazu Takemura, and some nervy bloke called Jim O'Rourke. Over chips and dips, the collaborators tossed a few ideas back and forth, sank some local brew and picked up their Biafran kneedrums, resonating fjord flutes, and Mongolian monochords, and got their moderately MoMA freak on. Pierce allows a tinny beatbox to oppress muffled congas as a Pullman-style guitar takes over tentative probing duties from the bass.
Pierce breaks up the airy reverie with a knuckle-head grunge guitar hammer.
Though vocalist Tsuyuko does her best to turn the track into an outtake from Lush's Scar sessions, it's a hope against hope. The assault is just overpowering when it could have taken us to territory unheard since Gil Norton's production of Pale Saints' The Comforts of Madness . Which is exactly what Jim O'Rourke does for his remix of the track. And how splendid it sounds.