| Who |
Brendan Curtis, percussion J.B. Mulrooney, guitar Scott Rogers, drumkit Kris Thompson, bass guitar Dave Yanolis, guitar (This was the lineup as of the 1992 press kit) |
| What | Nisi had a complex sound that... Screw that, I can't summarize it in a few words. But a lot of other people wrote some great reviews of the band that you can read. Ultimately you should just hunt down one of their cassettes or a copy of the album. |
| When | Nisi formed in late 1989, and generated considerable buzz in the press through assorted demo tapes, Rock 'n Roll Rumbles, and their one album release in 1992. Nisi went through many changes in line-up and at least one hiatus, until it finally disbanded in early 1995. |
| Links |
AMG
All Music Guide entry
UBL/ARTISTdirect |
I'm still putting this section together. Sure, I should wait until its fit to show before I put it up, but then maybe some kind soul will take pity on me and send in what they know/remember about the tapes. It also gives me time to go fetch the album from storage...
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Demo Derby Tape Late 1990 | I still don't know whose demo derby this was for certain. There's a write-up in the reviews section though. |
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Soon The Love Balloon Will Pop 9 songs Vinyl and cassette RRRecords Catalog #RRR 080 |
The Boston Phoenix
25 June 1992
by Richard Cromonic
This is music to get lost in. Listening to these nine tracks is like wandering through a sometimes dreamy, sometimes raucous soundscape where the landmarks keep shifting and changing. There's an ongoing moody beauty punctuated by moments of unearthly synth and guitar effects, anchored by tribal-stomping rhythms with incantatory vocals and lyrics snaking through everything.
"Motion of Complexity" and "Echo of Suggestion" are good examples of this complex mix of styles. "Entropy Happens" adds a rarefied sense of humor. The caterwauling guitar opening of "Penitence" segues into a rumbling surge of rhythm with Dave Y.'s breathy vocals flying above the fray.
On the other hand, tracks such as "Words" and "Dearly, Dearly" are hushed and meditative, with lush, languid washes of sound. And to nail down their intellectual pedigrees, they give you guest vocalist Des Desmond (of the Bentmen) manaically reading from Dostoyevsky while the band clang along in "Notes from the Underground." The songs are dense and thick and keep offering surprises. Nisi Period wade into the thick of art rock without becoming pretentious, turgid, or willfully abstruse; it's art rock for people who can't normally stand the stuff.
College Music Journal
Summer 1992
By Christina Zafiris
Emerging from previous Futures stardom, Nisi Period delivers on the promise of that tape. An interesting synthesis of goth, tribal, new wave, and art rock makes the music dynamic, which is common for the obscure RRR label, yet at the same time strangely pop. Their music follows lightly along the lines drawn by bands on Independant Project, such as the gothic density of FourWayCross and the tribal bass of Savage Republic, so it seems appropriate that this record is adorned with the engraved cardboard of the IP press.
With a tinge of Daniel Ash's vocal style ("Penitence"), Nisi Period's musical pondering creates a dense, artistic composition. Definite favorites are the rolling rhythm of "Echo of Suggestion" that softly claps above heavy harmonic bass, and the East Indian tingle that lingers among "Treat Her Like A Sailor" as the marching beat escalates from a whisper to a scream. Above all, Nisi Period retains a musical clarity despite its abundance of ideas.
The Sun
Lowell, Massachusetts
14 May 1992
Literate Lowell band makes very good with its full length debut. You may have heard a couple of the tracks on other collections, but this nine track LP or tape is full-blown Nisi Period, from the galloping rage of "Entropy Happens" to the dreamier "Words".
Big, pounding rhythms drive plenty of the songs, and distorted guitars abound. If there are faint shades of Syd Barrett, so to are there influences from modern Industrial bashers. When most "underground" music is just coporate wolves in "correct" clothing and hairstyles, this is the real thing.
THE NOISE Rock Around Boston
May 1992
By D.T.
NISI PERIOD
RRRecords Catalog #RRR 080 9 song LP
Soon The Love Balloon Will Pop
Finally, the long-awaited debut from Boston's answer to groups like King Crimson, Nisi Period. Where Crimson smirked with wry humor, Nisi Period keep a straight face and make it work just as successfully. All those popular radio tapes ("Notes From The Underground," "Words," and the biggies "Entropy Happens" and "Echo of Suggetion") appear here, along with some choice tracks from different sessions.
"Echo of Suggestion" opens the LP in a cool, sleek manner, the vocals almost whispered to lend a palpable mystique. That mystique is then turned, torn, and trounced into apprpriate levels of hypnosis.
Amid all the rich sounds herein (Is that a synthesizer? No, it's a guitar.), the one instrumental constant is the rolling thunder of Nisi Period's drums. Each selection has a swelling, explosive, yet non-redundant undercurrent of pummeling. It's crisp and tight on "Penitence", screamingly expressive on "Treat Her Like A Sailor", demurely anchoring on "Words" and "Unless", and super-Bonzo-ific on "Entropy Happens". Nisi Period obviously realizes that even with all the other instruments going on (and with six members, that's quite a bit going on at once), it is vital to have a strong drum section under it all.
Nisi Period also realizes that less is more. Their arrangements can sound like a 50-peice orchestra, or they can resemble a trio. This ability itself is a damned snappy trick, but Nisi doesn't stop there. They go on to resemble a wide range of ensembles at once. Brian Eno and Robert Fripp are fist-fighting right now. The winner will produce the next slice of dementia from Nisi Period.
The Boston Phoenix
4 January 1991
by Sandy Masuo
Studio magic and electronics are an integral part of the soundscapes that the six members of Nisi Period create. But they differ from a lot of art rockers in that their approach is neither bombastic nor gratuitous. Throughout their three-song tape, this month's Demo Derby winner, Nisi Period maintain a careful balance between spontaneous, almost erratic sonic effects and highly organized arrangements that make the music expand beyond its eight-track mixes.
"The studio is very important," says vocalist/guitarist/drum programmer Dave Yanolis, who also plays a role in the band's production. "You're talking about something that people are going to be listening to - not necessarily at raging parties or whatever. It's like a book. You want it to be read in a certain way."
Yanolis has an equally strong regard for more human elements, like connecting with an audience - an ambition he found a shortage of during his two-year stay at the Berklee College of Music, whose students, he observes, frequently suffer from a "failure to actually think that a band is something that goes on stage and presents a picture, not a showcase for musicianship." The tension between musicianship and live showmanship is what gives Nisi Period's music its impetus.
"Echo of Suggestion" gusts along with a carefully orchestrated harshness that's reminiscent of Wire but less claustrophobic. Biting guitars lurch out of the ominous drone of double-tracked bass lines as soft, insistent vocals weave pressurized melodies. The ambitious "Notes from the Underground," which features vocals by Bentmen frontman Bill Desmond, pits a smattering of excerpts from Dostoyevsky's brutally satiric narrative against a wall of swelling sythesizer sounds. Like the monologue delivered by Dostoyevsky's alienated protagonist, Desmond's venemous vocals lash out at the impervious sounds that surround him.
"Des has this maniacal voice and does crazy things [with it]," Yanolis explains." Myself and [percussionist" J.B. [Mulrooney], being fans of the Bentmen, approached Des and asked him if he wouldn't mind laying a track on this peice of music we were a little perplexed about. We just weren't quite sure what we were going to do with it, and J.B. came up with the idea of having Des recite a portion of `Notes from the Underground' over it using his crazy voice, because Dostoyevsky was such a sick man. We had Des in there and we wrote it out for him - real impromptu. There's lines in there that he mixed up that just read so well the way that he mixed them up - the kind of little paradoxes that he created with the stuff he says - but it worked, and that's it."
Although "Notes" is probably the most striking piece on the demo (having already caught the ears of the folks at the College Music Journal, who featured it on their weekly syndicated college radio show, The TDK Music Report), Yanolis doesn't feel it's typical of the band's sound. "It doesn't even have our drummers on it. [Nisi Period are rounded out by Brenden Curtis on drums and percussion, Scott Rogers on drums, Joel Simches on synthesizer, and Kris Thompson of bass and guitar.] That was an eight-track recording, and as it stood, with Des laying down what he did and what we already had on tape, we couldn't fit the drums on it. So it sounds like this drum-machine thing, like a studio project, which is essentially what it was, and I just don't think that's representative of the band right now."
According to Yanolis, "Unless" is a much beter example of Nisi Period. More relaxed than "Echos of Suggestion" and less theatrical than "Notes from the Underground," it establishes an eerie, pensive mood with an intro that could almost have been borrowed from the soundtrack of Alien. The half-spoken, slightly processed vocals stroll through murky musical surroundings that eventually evolve into a mesmerizing fabric of cross-rhythms - an element of the music that Yanolis hopes will become more prominent in Nisi Period's next recording, which is scheduled for release to radio and interested record labels in January.
Got the following note forwarded to me a few days before Nisi's last show was supposed to happen. It pretty much speaks for itself...
Date: Thu, 9 Feb 1995 16:00:11 -0500 (EST) From: John Mulrooney Subject: Thursday, Feb 16th (fwd) Wanna play drums at TT's on Thurday the 16th?
smj@spamfree.crash.com
(lose the spam)
Last Updated: 14 June 1997