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***Factums are a contempo three-piece hailing out of Seattle who claim to have ties with (i.e. include former members of) A-Frames and The Intelligence. But since we don't subscribe to The Rocket or have li'l Johnny Poneman fetch us our lattes (anymore!), it's hard to know if that pedigree is even worth mentioning. Everyone's entitled to a past, dubious as it might be. Dieter Meier would have you believe that he had no punk history before Yello. Take that, Fresh Color! Anyway, Factums don't seem to relish or recoil from the facts and let's face it, if it helps the records fly off the shelves, how's that a bad thing? Originally released as a CD in 2004, Alien Native shows a band burrowed deep in the mystery and menace of the nascent gnarl of experimental art rock. Imagine a record collection consisting solely of The Residents' Fingerprince, Chrome's Alien Soundtracks, and Cabaret Voltaire's Nag Nag Nag. A blast from any of these records could clear a house back in the old days; now they fill it. Fortunately The Factums don't operate on such a binary plane. They are capable of resorting to either option, depending on the time and place. Alien Native is a great swab of past-sounding electro-junkoid rumble absorbed into the mind and matter of present day pre-analog excavators. |
