CD Review: Rob Magill "Cigarette Smoke Perfume/The Apologetic Media" (Weird Cry Records)

[$8 // https://rob-magill.bandcamp.com/album/cigarette-smoke-perfume // http://weirdcry.com/]

It's worth noting that the first time I tried to play this CD, Windows Media Player looked at me like I was trying to extract audio from a text file.   The files have a .cda extension and when I looked that up with a google search several articles I read said that it was supported by WMP.    So I tried opening them up again and they worked.    I feel like WMP and google somehow worked together on that one, like once I validated it on the internet WMP said, "Oh yeah, I do support those files"and let them play.    Just something to think of in this world of twisted technology.

This CD is the first release on Weird Cry Records and it is also a pairing of two albums by Rob Magill.     The sounds are those of guitar notes, soft in a western sense, and then a saxophone plays along.    There is a moment of spoken word poetry, but there are also vocals later on in the funky jazz.    Vocally, it is somewhere between Tom Waits and one of those things you talk through when you have the cancer hole in your throat.   That only seems fitting because half of this is called "Cigarette Smoke Perfume"

For the record: Don't most smokers try to mask their cigarette smell?  Why would anyone want to make a perfume out of it?    It's somehow worse than reeking of booze, at least to me.

Sometimes this reminds me of Dead Western and other times there are simply a lot of piano pieces strung together.    There is one classical symphony part that kind of gets chopped up and played back with sort of skips in it.    There is also the sounds of eating and then two people talking about whether or not people will be listening to them talking.  

So while this starts with guitars and horns, it turns into piano and then  eventually just kind of fades out into general weirdness.   It's nice because the movements come and go and it doesn't seem to try to combine them all at once or mix them up really, as they feel like separate pieces (and that may also have to do with this being two albums in one)    The vocals add a nice edge to a sound we've heard somewhat before but not in this way.