Karnival: Dysfunctional Motion Picture

Karnival's latest album Dysfunctional Motion Picture is a wake-up call for people like me who had decided the local rock scene had nothing to offer us. Originally composed as the score to a film that ended up not happening after all, Karnival went ahead and released it independently as an album. For free.

The first thing that strikes you is the album's sheer consistency. Every track draws its inspiration from the same emotional space. This may be a problem for those of us whose listening habits center around a few standout tracks, but quite welcome for fans of albums as cohesive musical journeys.

I am unfamiliar with the plot of the abortive film and so can't set the songs in their appropriate context, but one can imagine. The music suggests a late, cold night where vaguely unsavoury people are doing vaguely unsavoury things in an appealing way. For the most part it is introspective and relaxing.  I frankly was not too impressed with the first few tracks, which sound like cinematic Floydian funk. I would have loved to hear those songs being played at a lounge, but in the context of home listening I would rather listen to Grails' Deep Politics, which does it better. (That being said the opening track, Cafuné, is clearly the one to listen to in that set.) Things get more interesting with Mad Day Out. The drums by Khalid Ashraf are crisp and clear (perhaps a mite too much, some of those edges should have been sanded off) and the bass from Mousum Dhamai offers a compelling groove. The effects-laden guitars by Salmi Rahman and Tinu Rashid swim out of the haze to do things to you. Some of the effects on certain tracks are fairly sinister to say the least, and I wonder if anyone in Karnival enjoyed playing the Zerg in Starcraft. When Karnival strays out of the general template of the rest of the album, the results are mixed. Narco Culture is notably bleak, which is something I usually enjoy but at 4 minutes 26 seconds it's rather too little for rather too long. Pay to Play in contrast is more much abrasive rock just a minute and a half in length and actually does quite well in that time, but feels a little out of place on this record. Pie in the Sky is haunted and spacy and there is this particular effect they achieve that puzzles me: is that a guitar made to sound like a woman, or a woman made to sound like a guitar? Either way, it is eerie. It works. The closing track, Dysfunction, is a sum up of all the tricks Karnival plays on us through the record. If you don't want to bother with the whole album, this is basically the bullet-points.

As something emerging from the Bangladeshi rock scene, this is quite impressive and original. It is, I think, a mark of respect to the band that I won't make any excuses for it and shall compare it against similar music that already exists on the international scene. Certainly other bands abroad outperform Karnival in each of the elements incorporated in Dysfunctional Motion Picture, and indeed many groups offer a more compelling synthesis of the individual elements as well. Regardless, I don't know of any other group anywhere that has meshed together all of this in one package, and despite the hiccups I must say I enjoyed the album and would have no hesitation in suggesting that anyone pick it up. There are kinks to iron out, certainly, but Karnival is on the verge of developing something very rare: a unique sound. I look forward to seeing what their future releases give us.

You can LEGALLY download the album from http://karnivalofficial.com/