Quality
During the summer of 2009, a very special bootleg cam-phone version of Crank 2: High Voltage was blessing the internet torrent community (currently non-existent). Because this version was of such amateur quality, a lot of the cartoon sounds and slapstick action from the glossy film was experienced in a grittier and hyperbolic accentuation. The storyline to the movie is simple, and practically nil, revolving around organized chaos; the movie plotlessly interweaves short bursts of pandemonium in order to keep momentum. This theater cam-phone version of Crank 2: High Voltage also recorded the sound at one level, which canceled out lower-edited noises, so if background music was playing when someone began speaking or shooting, the music would instantly be absorbed and align the viewer’s direction to the blown-out, over-emphasized situation/violence occurring on screen. Thus, the entire bootleg of Crank 2: High Voltage was more of an action-film stage and theater piece that included faceless cast members getting up to grab a refill of popcorn.
This type of controlled chaos that bootleg of Crank 2: High Voltage portrayed is exactly what Mind Dynamics, the Brooklyn duo of Brian Whatever and Daniel Creahan, is traversing in ALL TERRAIN. Like the way the audio mingles in and out of the movie, between the character’s composure and completely raged-out bouts, ALL TERRAIN structures itself based on a production duo syncing in and out of rhythms together while soaking up and squeezing out sounds. And typically, it’s very hard to conceptualize dance/club music without being direct and/or obvious. Mind Dynamics does this by dressing the action of ALL TERRAIN in meticulous disarray. I mean, metaphorically, by way of what each track wears as a piece of music: the fabric is knotted together in spastic areas that look like bursts of genius, sustained by a surrounding, taught weave that is coarse with frays. Like that bootleg version of Crank 2: High Voltage, Mind Dynamics models ALL TERRAIN with sordid tumult that equally auto-pilots through fastidiously controlled environments, all of it linked by simultaneously peeling away from each realm, relentlessly.
Fashion
The epinephrine bar is stocked and brimming with various types of adrenaline to fuel the evening. Skull plugs are available for direct entry into any willing cranium, using these fiber-synaptic cables, so patrons will be mentally brought from 0 to 50,000 in about three minutes IRL time, but micro-seconds in audible measurement. ALL TERRAIN is pounding through pyramid speakers. Nose-to-ear chains vibrate, spiked LED-frosted hair burns at the ends, perfectly circular lensed goggles fog up, surgically implanted processor fans whirl red, cropped-tops or luminescent body-art, eight-inch hover-heel platforms, and the bare pupils reflect a silhouette of patrons aflame on the dance floor. Mind Dynamics courses coercion through the stereo via insatiably conflicting rhythms, and the future-freak becomes atwitter at every illegal night club under the strip.
Through an MS DOS-lettered stream of silk road trafficking updates and bids scrolling from one side of your goggles to the other, a woman in her late 30s — tips of her ears stretched out and matted down by a cloth-elastic band — wears a screen across her eyes and nose, smiling at something as if it’s right before her. You see your reflection in her eye-monitor, and it begins to trick the way you’re perceiving reality: a high-definition visual of your clothes slipping off your person, you’ve only latex on and only three holes. ALL TERRAIN begins again in your wireless ear-buds, and Mind Dynamics ensnares your body with little room to breath. Or just barely enough. And the restriction of the music makes it just hot enough to both blare and arouse. It’s welcomed fear. It’s a kicked psychedelia.
Hitting that first bit of impenetrable soil with a shovel is the greatest thing after a few hours of digging, covered in mud. ALL TERRAIN continuing to keep your energy sparked, emitting from your pocket at the highest level your speaker can handle. So fucking what if this is grave robbing; you got a name and a shovel, and now it’s time to unearth: a casket full of guns and microchips. Dragging it all to the surface while leaking some epinephrine from your skull-holes, there’s a mechanical pack of dogs across the way atop of the bridge, red-eye mugging you. On the other side of the cemetery is a figure that appears as half robot, but maybe it’s a tattoo. You slink quickly into the sewer to the left, riding the coffin down a pipe-slide, and escape before anyone noticed anything at all. Then is when you strike the clarity that Mind Dynamics not only drops in and out of unexpecting sounds, but they rely on this method of immediate psychedelic trip-up in order to transition into an entirely different scene. And they don’t mind the mud.
Garden Interlude
There’s always that moment in harsh action flicks when a good or evil character’s bloodlust takes their thoughts, and whether they’re with a henchman or a sidekick; either/or is trying to pull this said “character” off the overkill they’re pulverizing. This is the fine line that’s heard in ALL TERRAIN. Throughout most of the album, Mind Dynamics relies on chaotic and transitional strengths, withholding a zone that is future-hard and fast-paced for the 21st-century club. Most times, when a beat goes on too long, it’s backed by these dropped-out psychedelic noises and melodies, then j-hooked into another pounding beat, lined along a separate angle.
The fine line is crossed on occasion when these beats become tedious. This tendency could be because of the sporadic and hyper-evolving structure ALL TERRAIN bares, and in the parts where it doesn’t happen as often, it sounds as if they forgot, or just got caught up on the dance floor for a minute. Like they’re trying to stabilize a musically core fashion of full-on leather fingerless gloves, but what happens is the smoke clears while a beat lingers for a moment too long, and you notice they got mesh fingerless gloves on for sweat purposes. That’s the moment you get a twinkle of reality that is a bit disappointing, but since the structure of ALL TERRAIN is constantly shifting, Mind Dynamics is aware you’re looking at their netted gloves and turns the track around again, transitioning your ass into dance submission.
Choreography
The most unnoticeable part of ALL TERRAIN is the way it makes you move. Upon the first few listens, I experienced the album in the shower, moving until the water was cold. I didn’t get anything done but dance. Thus, there’s a directly possessive quality to the beats and samples and synthetics. It’s almost as if Mind Dynamics planned out an entire footwork schematic on free-style dance, then translated it audibly and it came out ALL TERRAIN. Below are my three favorite fight scenes from the movie The Raid 2), in direct reference to Mind Dynamics’ ALL TERRAIN:
This clip represents Mind Dynamics’ respect for the power-plug and coordination in confined spaces. Most of the transitions heard in ALL TERRAIN are housed in a very small arena, and time is typically of the essence. Thus, Mind Dynamics presents the perfect tag-team production duo in terms of fighting back time with practiced cooperation and the foresight of sonic fluidity. The respect for the power-plug draws more from the stall being burst open, because: could you imagine ALL TERRAIN going hard in the club only to be unplugged? The result would look like this prison fight to get it turn’t back on.
Here, we witness Mind Dynamics (again) within tight quarters, but this is when the transitions interplay, and ALL TERRAIN becomes quite literal. The video is a good representation of how one can produce in another’s realm (we’ll say Daniel is Iko and Brian is the SUV), and one is struggling with the other, while the other is maintaining their own chaos, sometimes being steered by the passenger. But there’s always a backup car (idea/beat/melody) on their tail that’ll help them further shift the scenario. BTW: wtf is this FilmiSnow at the end of this clip?
It’s not that one is ever better than the other, but they both give themselves the platform to provide a full range of their skill sets, together. Mind Dynamics is full-on: show me what you got, because I want to match you. ALL TERRAIN is the exploration of a well-maintained duo experiencing a singular aureole. Within this, one may get smacked to bits by the other, but a fight was put into play, and together they achieve victory as a pair. It’s a rarity to experience such a duo like Mind Dynamics. ALL TERRAIN goes so many distances in a gallery of directions that it’ll trick you right into the travel, and you may never come back.
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