This CD opens with a quiet, ambient fog. This goes on for a bit and then some sonar beeps come out in a loop. It's a nice little melody and it has hints of an elevator song. A glass bottle type of clanking gets added in and there is some distorted ripping behind that. The glass bottle goes solo and there is this slight chugging behind it. This builds into big beats, which could even be close to stomping, and then lasers come through even harder and it just feels like an alien takeover. The whole thing feels like something out of "Invader Zim" by this point and as we near the nine minute mark the sounds fade and it becomes hollow at the end.
The second track has some ticking sounds that are a cross between rain drops falling on a tin roof and very light drumming. This is accompanied by some sharp sounds which are what I imagine dog whistles are made of and when I went to turn them down the first time I accidentally turned them up. Didn't make that mistake again though and once you know they're coming they're a bit more tolerable. Within these sounds also comes this "shhhhhhp" sound I can't place with another song but it is in some older rock, like one particular moment in "Come Together" but that doesn't really help. Robotic sounds come out that are a cross between aliens and Gremlins and then there are audio clips of people talking in there as well.
A bass line comes in and I can feel the funk but there is also some sharpness coming back as it sounds like a modem connecting at the same time. Vocals come out- they are singing- but they are heavy on the autotune because it sounds like they're coming out through that T Pain microphone I always used to see at Target. The next song comes right in with sharp beeping which is held down steady and I'm beginning to wonder what this guy has against dogs and why he's trying to get all of my neighborhood dogs wild and possibly barking. Thankfully there is some construction outside and no dog is *too* close to me so as to be able to hear this. The pitch and frequency are changing though so I feel like this is some sort of hearing test you'd get at the doctor.
Some less sharp bits come in as well, but this is really just a symphony for the dogs here on the third song and I'm finding it a bit hard on my ears myself. If I wake up with my tinnitus flaring up tomorrow you know I can only have this CD to thank. Some footsteps are coming in and people are talking but it's hard to hear over the sharpness of it all because that part is just such right out there on the surface. I'm glad the first time I listened to this I wasn't driving, though I can only imagine what playing this at maximum volume would do to those you drove by. About halfway through the third track there is no signs of this slowing down or becoming less painful for the poor, poor doggies. Little computer typ blips come in but the sharpness is still there. Is listening to this the entire way through some sort of test of endurance or something?
I have it turned down really low my first time through and will most likely skip through this track on future listens because I need to save these old man ears for listening to other things. When I'm much older than I am now I want to be able to still hear things and this might not be the best way to go about that. Some machine gun fire type of drums can be heard faintly in the background, but the sharpness persists. Around the nine minute or so mark the sharpness disappears, but it does come back at times ever so slightly and I would just recommend not listening to this particular track on this CD if you value the quality of your ears. Distorted robotics and space blasts come out but it's too late because my ears already feel like they've gone down in points. Granted, I'm hoping this doesn't do any actual damage to my ears and I just *feel* like it's going to, but none the less this third track is not one I am eager to revisit.
On track four we have this hollow fog to start, then vocals come in which is just genuinely singing. Drum machine beats come in and this has an era of Phil Collins to it or just something from that time frame. Screeches come through in the background, though they feel like nothing compared to the track before it. This feels like a pop rock song of some sort and if I listened to more of the college rock radio I'd probably be able to find you a lesser version of it but it does remind me of the cassette released under his actual name. Through claps and organs this is such a different turn to take following the first two songs and then what happened on the third as well. This song doesn't really end so much as it just blisses out.
The last song has some static crumpling and the second I hear some sharpness come in I feel worried it's going to go back to the way that the third track was. There is a distinct sound of rain and water as if we are on a ship during a storm. A sharpness can be found in here and it's not quite the same as on the third track but it is consistent and somewhat distracting from all else going on along with it. I can think of this as being a slightly more tolerable version of the third track only I'm not sure I'll want to listen to it again either, even if it is only like electronic bugs swarming.
So of these five tracks I'd really say if you're going to listen to this to just skip the third one because you don't need to be a hero-- not for this-- but it just kind of amazes me that we can go from the first two songs, which are nice enough and I like them for what they are, then into something I just simply cannot listen to because of the sound it is projecting and then there is this electro-pop-rock song in the fourth spot. It goes from perhaps the most friendly of genres to the least appealing and does so with other stretches in between. For all of the music that I've listened to in my lifetime I have turned songs off before because I simply didn't like them, but this is the first time I've had to turn a song off simply because I could not stand it.
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