Friday Full-Length: Fu Manchu, Clone of the Universe
Gotta respect the outlier. The weird one. In a discography that as of this writing holds no fewer than 12 albums, this being number 11, Clone of the Universe is something of an outlier. Released Feb. 9, 2018, through the band’s At the Dojo Records imprint — the second self-release behind 2014’s Gigantoid (discussed here, review here) — it’s probably best known as the one that has Alex Lifeson from Rush on it, and fair enough.
For the band, that seemed to be a focal point by which I mean probably something of a life-event on a personal level. I won’t claim to be a huge Rush fan in no small part because I know people who are and I’ve seen the passion they inspire, but “Il Mostro Atomico,” the almost but not entirely instrumental 18-minute multi-movement epic-o’-riff that Fu Manchu and Lifeson conjure to close out the album and consume all of its B-side, is unlike anything else the Fu had done before or have done since.
It completely changes the structure of the LP, and it throws a wrench in what, certainly by 2018, was a pretty vivid expectation on the part of listeners. That is to say, generally speaking — and indeed for the first half of Clone of the Universe as well — Fu Manchu aren’t trying to be tricky and they don’t need to be. Their songs can come right at you, like “Intelligent Worship” and “(I’ve Been) Hexed” do here. “Don’t Panic” is a punker’s gallop and it’s paired with “Slower Than Light,” with its languid-till-it-very-much-isn’t flow. The way Clone of the Universe plays out, it’s almost like two EPs put together — you’ll recall Fu Manchu did that 19 years earlier with Godzilla’s Eatin’ Dust (discussed here) — and the story of the record is invariably “Il Mostro Atomico,” the great standout, but across the six songs they pack onto side A, it’s some of the band’s most efficient songwriting to-date.
I don’t know which was recorded first, between “Il Mostro Atomico” and the first half of the 36-minute LP before it, but if you told me that the atomic monster was tracked before anything else and that the band were then tasked with packing an album’s worth of Fu Manchu into, well, 
about 18 minutes, the way the material from “Intelligent Worship” to the title-track works makes that seem like not a crazy read. Each of the first six songs — and certainly the seventh as well, but I’m just talking about the shorter cuts for now — offers something distinct from the others, or does something in a different way. In tone, the vocals of founding guitarist Scott Hill — the established lineup of Hill, guitarist Bob Balch, bassist Brad Davis and drummer Scott Reeder remains here; Jim Monroe engineered/co-produced (he mixed/did additional recording on Gigantoid), while Andrew Giacumakis (who helmed Gigantoid) mixed and recorded some of the bass and drums — and the prevalence of hooks, Clone of the Universe doesn’t want for consistency, but each song is hitting its own marks.
“Intelligent Worship” is uptempo, but not a rush, has a characteristic start-stop riff and is the first in a succession of earworms. Business as usual for Fu Manchu? To an extent, yes, but the fuzz throughout Clone of the Universe retains some of the gnarlier edge that Gigantoid brought to it after the largesse of their two Century Media releases, and “Intelligent Worship” puts the focus early on the energy of their delivery, which at this point had already been among the band’s primary strengths for 28 years. The way “(I’ve Been) Hexed” answers by opening wider in its chorus feels also like it’s speaking a bit to the more confrontational sound of 2009’s Signs of Infinite Power (discussed here), which is something that Reeder as the last piece slotted into place in this lineup definitely bolstered.
The already noted charge of “Don’t Panic” — all of two minutes long and your diligent reminder this is a punk band — and the subsequent mellowing of “Slower Than Light” follow, one into the next. It’s about as back-and-forth as Clone of the Universe gets, since that isn’t really how the album works or seems to want to work, but it’s invariably also a ready example of their dynamic. “Nowhere Left to Hide,” the longest song on side A at 4:18, follows and contrasts a quiet verse with the hardest-landing stomp of a chorus and a slower roll marked by the drum fills and the solo at the finish, coming back to ground for the start-stop immediately-dug-in feel of the title-track.
“Clone of the Universe” feels like quintessential Fu Manchu for most of its sub-three-minute run, but they blow it out in the second half and Balch shreds it to pieces as he will before they hit the slowdown and hard stop. But in terms of sonic identity, there’s no chance you’re listening to anybody else when that song is on. The stage is set, then, by this we-compressed-an-LP’s-worth-of-Fu–Manchu-into-18-minutes, for “Il Mostro Atomico,” which plays out across multiple movements and is dug in in an entirely different way to any other piece in the band’s discography to this point, not departing a verse/chorus for a jam, but setting itself to an instrumentalist sprawl and including vocals in what was almost certainly a later addition to its midsection.
There isn’t another Fu Manchu song like it, and sure enough, it’s an epic worthy of the experience of its making. Lifeson‘s guitar effects course through, intermingling with Balch and Hill‘s progressions, and honestly, it’s about as far away from what you’d expect on a Fu Manchu record and still have it be them, so as it happened on their 11th record which came out, as noted, 28 years into their tenure, it feels like an even more admirable realization for the decision that it was time to start experimenting with the formula.
Could “Il Mostro Atomico” have been released on its own? Yes, but not putting it on an LP would almost feel like a waste in terms of preserving it, and Fu Manchu shine over the course of a full-length, regardless of its construction. Clone of the Universe is a singular moment for them, and for its aspects familiar and not, a landmark in their catalog.
As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.
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Man, last weekend being Roadburn was kind of sad, mostly because I wasn’t there. If you were, I hope it was cool.
Let’s see, what’s up this week. The world remains a roiling genocidal shitshow operating at the questionable financial benefit of madmen. The Patient Mrs. booked my flights for Desertfest Oslo and Freak Valley. Unless an invite comes in for the Fall — there’s a fest in Hungary I’m co-presenting in September that I’d love to go to, or Ripplefest Texas, but neither of those is good timing, plus money is impossible and I don’t think either of them has any interest in flying me out — it’ll be those, Tee Pee’s Cosmic Sonic Rendezvous in NYC and later this year the …In the Key of Doom that Gav’s Heavily Curated is doing in Brooklyn. I’d like to do Emissions From the Monolith, but gas, time, and money. So I’m looking forward to getting out where and when I can.
They put The Pecan in fourth grade math starting this week. She’s in second grade, but they tested her as part of our constant bitching that she’s not being academically challenged and found that, indeed, she’s way ahead second grade in terms of what she knows. So she’s been going to the new class, which she is smart enough to know makes her smart but still eight years old enough to feel like a big deal about it. Most of her arrogance is boasting to mask anxiety — where on earth did she get that from? — but it’s nice to see her excel and feel good about it. She’s got enough bullshit on her plate any given day just being told to sit in her chair for six hours. Which, when you think about it, kind of seems like torture, whether you love learning or not.
She had her first test, which we’re kind of figuring she might’ve bungled because she’d only been in the class for three days, but hopefully she gets that back today. She said she thought she got 100, but you know, reading multiple-step directions has been a challenge before, and fourth grade is likely a more complex kind of questioning than she’s used to, so we’ll see. She blew up apparently when she walked into the room and there were partitions on the desks. “First I’m hearing of all this,” seemed to be her take as regards having the test.
Speaking of (there was a reference if you didn’t catch it), she’s also been revisiting Bluey the last couple days during tv time. No regrets there. That and Peep and the Big Wide World I think are my favorites. Of course Sesame Street.
Next week, I’m going to review the Slomosa live album, Live in Bergen, which is out for Record Store Day. I have an Iron Jinn premiere slated for next Thursday, but the week otherwise is kind of light, so I’m looking at May releases to hopefully start digging into. I’ve got a Quarterly Review to slate for May, as well as Desertfest Oslo to consider, so I need to look at the calendar generally and figure out where I’m at. Will I do that this weekend? I promise you, your guess is as good as mine.
Zelda update? Yes. I beat Echoes of Wisdom again, which is so cozy and fun that I even went through and got the heart pieces from the minigames, and I frickin’ hate minigames. I haven’t 100 percented it, and I’m not sure if I will — there are more heart pieces and might crystals I need and I’m not sure where to find them — but I got all the echoes and did some side quests I hadn’t done before, and I like it a lot. Maybe my favorite 2D Zelda, but don’t tell me that while I’m playing A Link to the Past. My laptop was on the fritz and I lost the ability to change a bunch of display settings, so I took three hours Monday and, by dumb luck, managed to fix it. I celebrated by doing the trading quest in The Wind Waker in that same modded game on the emulator. I still have the withered deku tree quest I can do, but I’m saving it for a special occasion/when I feel like it as well.
I’ve also resigned myself to at some point playing through Twilight Princess again — but it’s so long — but there’s an unofficial PC port in the works (actually two of them, Dusk and Courage Reborn; these are the result of decompilation efforts; see also Ship of Harkinian as relates to Ocarina of Time), so I think I’m going to wait for that and see how it runs because when I ran it through Dolphin (the emulator) last time it was pretty laggy. I also last night as The Patient Mrs. was doing bedtime put on Tears of the Kingdom for a few, did a couple shrines, a couple sidequests, explored a well I hadn’t been in yet, some wanton bokoblin slaughter, etc., all in the modded game.
I can see myself returning to that game again and again, vanilla or modded, over the next years, even more than Breath of the Wild. There’s so much you can do in that sandbox. Though I was also thinking of digging back into BOTW for a playthrough, but I honestly don’t have the kind of time to do it right and I think I’m so ingrained in TOTK that not being able to cheese those motion control shrines would destroy me. Plus I’d have to learn how to parry guardian lasers and do the Trial of the Sword DLC and blah blah blah feels laborious so obviously it’s not the time for that. Plus in Breath of the Wild you can’t ride the dragons. Okay, I talked myself out of it. /end Zelda update
Thanks for indulging me. Apparently I had more to say about Zelda than I thought going in. I assure you that however tired of it you are pales in comparison to The Patient Mrs.’ level of me-fatigue.
Have a great and safe weekend — unless you’re a fascist in which case stop engaging with art because you don’t deserve it in your life — and don’t forget to hydrate. I think The Patient Mrs. is going to a conference in Burlington, Vermont, tonight, but we need to figure out how she’s getting there; we’re down a car with one in the shop. I also need to hit the weed store. Either way, I’m back Monday with hopefully that Slomosa review and more good stuff besides and will be around this weekend to try to do some emails and get stuff ready for the week if you need me.
Thanks for reading.
FRM.
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Tags: At the Dojo Records, California, Clone of the Universe, Fu Manchu, Fu Manchu Clone of the Universe, San Clemente
