May I Meet My Accuser, released by the Imaginary Conflict label is, wildly enough, only the second full-length from Magas (aka James Marlon Magas). As an artist Magas has been hanging out making mischief on the fringes of noise and electronic music since the early 1990s, whether it was playing in Couch with Aaron Dilloway, being a member of Lake of Dracula, remixing Bonn Conn tracks, or just generally being gleefully obnoxious and participating in things that kept him amused. Then comes this slab. It's big-bottom beats, wild pitch-warped synths, distorted vocals, hammered loops, and wonk and whir come off as a new, (yes, new) electro-swamp music for the dawn of this final century -- though that "swamp" is made up decaying burned out Americans in a malaise caused by rampant consumerism, a trashed environment that nobody can admit to, and the boredom that comes with having seen it all and done it all; coming to the point of total exhaustion itself. There's isn't anything left but aimless and speedy, whirling motion. There are no bayous or Everglades in the Magas world. He seems to glean a kind of happiness from it all and how can you blame him? He may be the last enlightened man. There is no such thing as existential angst in Magas' life. The lyrics in Easy to Please, the cranking second track on this all-too brief long-player (a little over 31 minutes is it, and it ain't enough) namechecks Louisiana, Texas, Arizona, and Los Angeles: "...Burning straight on through til I hit the tar pits down in La Brea....I'm easy to please..." Uh huh. What do all these places have in common besides points on a map? They are all places where things -- and people -- go to dream, flame out, and die. The tempo shifts, interluded by freakazoid power electronics and insane beat-driven mayhem make this the party track to liven up any dull gathering. Folks could hang out around the keg or do the herky-jerky on the floor and chant the refrain while foaming at the mouth. Easy to Please is the new beer bong chant. This isn't the only place it happens, he follows up with Chicagocide and lyrics that state the obvious but not always observable: "spinning about on a Saturday night/And you don't know what to do..." One would like to think that Magas and Frank Zappa -- had Zappa been a fan of either Suicide or the Normal -- could have worked on his little ditty I Need Love together; such is the humor, the poignancy, and the absurdity that Magas actually reflects back into the void from his place behind a bank of keyboards and drum machines (an 808, an ARP 2800, and a whole buncha other groovy junk, too -- including a Casio RZ-1!). In this musical universe, there's a place to actually wear a ring modulator -- in your bass zone, baby. Despite its brevity, May I Meet My Accuser isn't sinister -- hope he didn't mean it to be -- it's a riot. Transgressors, Highway Art, and One Hundred Ten, keep that insightful though wild, irony-spiked razor sharp. The music, in layers of motor psycho gear pushed to the brink of ruin, and then just out the other edge of the red zone, is not only clever and insistent, it's tribal, unifying, something more #Night of the Living Dead Meets The Devils Angels than the #Stepford Wives. And it rocks. Period. Just get it. Tune out, turn on, wig out. ~ Thom Jurek, Rovi

1		Black Door [Instrumental]
2		Easy to Please
3		Chicagocide
4		I Need Love
5		May I Meet My Accuser
6		Transgressors
7		Walk Through the Dark
8		Highway Hat
9		Burst City [Instrumental]
10		One Hundred Ten