Backspace Pushes Past the Bleeding Edge on Sophomore Release "Ants Corrupt Elephant"

Drew Pittock, Contributing Editor | Apr 3, 2021 2:30 pm | Add a comment | 277 reads

With the release of their 2018 debut Human Nature Architecture, Backspace had a clear and defiant message for modern society. Deeply rooted in solipsism, existential techno-dread, and a sincere frustration with humanity’s increasing dissociative tendencies, the Beijing-based quartet authored a sonic manifesto fit for the Black Mirror generation. Now, on their follow-up Ants Corrupt Elephant – released last Wednesday, Mar 24 via Maybe Mars Records – the band is doubling-down on their disdain for the blind pursuit of "progress,” while making space for the emotions waylaid by our self-induced alienation.

According to guitarist and vocalist Zheng Dong, the two albums are inextricably linked, both thematically and musically. If Human Nature Architecture was preoccupied with technology and vapid innovation, Ants Corrupt Elephant is a meditation on the natural world reflected in humanity. “The content conveyed [in Ants Corrupt Elephant] is indeed based on the expansion of the first album,” says Zheng. “In the early stages of creating the new album, we made a conceptual framework and named the songs after animals. [However], what is written is still [about] things that happen in our social environments.”

Likewise, under the tutelage of producer Li Ping – a member of veteran experimental art-rock group Duck Trick – the band was able to reimagine their surf rock-cum-post punk roots in a significant way, making clever use of strings, woodwinds, choral arrangements, and a hell of a lot more percussion. The result is deep, groovy paths that cut through lush instrumental overgrowth and an aural exploration that’s not for the faint of heart – a manifestation of nature’s delicate balance and all of the chaos contained within.

Whereas Human Nature Architecture was a lurid road trip along the streets of a crumbling metropolis, Ants Corrupt Elephant is at once a tense and blissed-out joyride through the humid depths of a cosmic jungle, destination unknown. The first single, “Elephant Treasure” sees the band continuing to jam at the altar of space rock stalwarts like Neu!, however, such inspirations seem to be the exception this time around, and not the rule.

On album opener, “The Flamingo Bridge,” drummer Maoter and bassist Guagua are no longer content to simply propel the music forward in kinetic bursts of krautrock minimalism. Instead, they opt for a disorienting landscape of mischievous, unrelenting polyrhythmic fervor and percussive blooms. It’s fertile ground for guitarists Zheng and A’hui who navigate the dense environment with aplomb, two intrepid dreamers feasting on foliage of dubious origins, coming back from the brink with hazy eyes and a head full of visions. Meanwhile, the record’s penultimate closer, “Skunk Rules” is a scorching psychedelic freakout, letting up for a brief moment before plunging headfirst back into an unrelenting delirium.

Ants Corrupt Elephant is as much experimentation as it is plumbing the depths of familiar territory, a desperate search for an oasis in the furthest reaches of our collective psychoses, only to be dragged, kicking and screaming, back into the doldrums of modernity. If ever a band picked up where they left off, determined to push past the bleeding edge of their own sound, this is it. Human Nature Architecture’s liner notes closed by saying it “isn’t so much a cry for help as it is a rallying cry into the abyss that is our mind,” and in no uncertain terms, Ants Corrupt Elephant is a poignant letter penned from deep within that abyss.