Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Big City Orchestra – A Child's Garden of Noise

May 1994 • Drone Records

This release completely baffles me. No matter how much I think about it (though I try not to), I cannot figure out what the purpose of it is and how anyone at any point thought it would be appealing. Every bit of it is irritating and goes against all aspects of what good music should be.

Essentially, the A-side of this EP is a collage of spoken word clips and random noises (mostly sound effects, but some vinyl crackle and static as well). The spoken word segments seem to mostly come from educational records for young children about sound, and they are cut up in what I assume is an attempt at being creepy, which fails. They are sort of interesting at first, but eventually turn annoying as they repeat purposelessly. Nothing else happens.

The B-side is more sound collage, but instead of spoken word segments it mostly combines clips of things like piano recordings, various percussion mashing, and children attempting to sing. While the first side was tolerably bad, this side is completely horrid. The singing is atrocious and the instruments and sound clips don't attempt to justify it. And I cannot fathom the stupidity of including a typical parody of that Barney & Friends song every kid comes up with thinking they're clever; it wasn't funny when I was four and it isn't funny now.

Simply put, this EP sucks. I hated listening to it and I hated writing about it. Just about every second of it is completely annoying and an utter waste of time. Do yourself a favor and just forget you ever heard about it.

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