For I’ve Seen All I Need to See, he manages dual tricks that seem paradoxical. He’s steadily learned to harness the Body’s high-volume spectral madness, becoming a de facto member. There’s another reason it’s never seemed correct to call the Body a duo: For a decade, Buford and King have worked largely with one producer-Seth Manchester, at Rhode Island’s Machines with Magnets. This small format forces King and Buford to fold their strangest impulses into their most basic setup, meaning I’ve Seen All I Need to See gets more intense the more you listen. During the finale, “Path of Failure,” they lurch into a skittering instrumental section that suggests the Mahavishnu Orchestra abandoning its spirituality. The triumphant lift at song’s end, meanwhile, recalls Thou, who often offer a glimmer of relief just to revel in pulling it away. Opener “A Lament” uses the dramatic hip-hop cuts they’ve embraced (and sometimes overindulged) just enough to make you uneasy. Instead, they weave a decade of collaborative lessons into these songs. These two-piece blasts are not some nativist retreat, as if King and Buford were out to prove the Body remain unchanged. It’s almost impossible to decipher King’s words the music makes it unnecessary. For almost four minutes, “The Handle/The Blade” rumbles beneath a bed of ricocheting noise, like the soundtrack to chronic pain. During “The City Is Shelled,” the Body quake like a once-mighty band trying to fight through actual rubble. Still, the sounds hurt more than their underpinnings. The Body spend the next 37 minutes considering this grim scene from every angle, from the loneliness of the end to the dour acceptance of the living. Dunn’s poem is about the Groundhog Day-like torture of wanting to care for someone who is no longer there, of being forced to relive their death daily. A stoic reading of Douglas Dunn’s “ The Kaleidoscope”-written after the early death of the Scottish poet’s wife, Lesley, in 1981-unspools beneath curdled chords and foreboding drum knocks. I’ve Seen All I Need to See begins like a short horror film. The results are harsh but exhilarating, loud enough to make you worry about your speakers and anguished enough to make you worry about your sanity. Buford is an indomitable powerhouse, swiping at his drums as though his sticks were battering rams. But it’s mostly King’s low-strung guitar, so massive and mean it conjures an army of bassists frying amplifiers, and his high-strung voice, as piercing as the melting Wicked Witch. A few old friends show up to add jagged piano here, robotic narration there. It is a harrowing meditation on death and despondence, ruthlessly delivered by the Body’s core duo. King and Buford put that restlessness on temporary hold for I’ve Seen All I Need to See, their first album as a pair in three years.
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