Have we been putting up with coolness for too long? When I listen to »Hit the Breaks«, Physical Therapy’s first release for the finely curated Liberation Technologies label, I feel guilty. But why? I ask because, not long ago, I would have praised releases like this to the heavens. Today, I don’t. Physical Therapy starts with a breakbeat à la 1988, driving and casually structured at the same time. He lets an overtone-rich drone circulate over it and later adds an emphatic synthesiser loop. Nevertheless, the euphoria created here comes to nothing. It loses itself in a gesture that celebrates anaesthetics – with emphatically worn-out beats and Casio sounds that already sent an unpleasant shiver down my spine as a teenager back in 1992. Just listen to the hi-hat that pushes out of the hard plastic case (!) at the end of these four and a half minutes. Maybe it’s just a stupid joke (?). Only this one would simply remain unnoticed. The joke, like large parts of this EP, gets lost in the gesture of cool. But cool is used up. Cool is empty. Cool is ex post facto. The American author Rick Moody wrote that back in 1999, and it still applies today. Or it is true again today. We need more attitude, clearer references, more sensibility – in the music of today, as well. It’s quite possible that in the maelstrom of my inner turmoil I’m dismissing the next big thing. It is what it is. Cool was yesterday. I can do without the posturing of unassailability, self-effacement and indecisiveness at the moment. What I need now is unreserved passion, burning fire.
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