1995 • Pure
I rescued this album off the oft-ignored avant-garde shelf at the record store. I can understand that this sort of stuff doesn't often sell well... because this album is bad. It's disappointing because I can see potential in these tracks; some of it is good and it could have been a lot better but there are so many things it does wrong that it makes the whole experience leave a bad taste.
Most of the album is middling harsh noise—lots of heavily distorted static that is constantly changing up; it seems interesting at first simply because it's a bit nicely chaotic. (Think a harsh Merzbow without the intricate layering.) But after not too long, it becomes a very tedious listen for a few different reasons.
Mainly, it gets boring really fast. Even though it seems interesting at first, it soon becomes apparent that the album really isn't that diverse at all, and after the first track and a half you've already heard everything you're going to hear on the rest of it. I have to give it credit for trying, as the style isn't really repetitive within tracks (except a few choice spots, and especially the longer tracks), but on the whole it feels like the same thing over and over again.
It also doesn't help that the production and mixing is awful. There's pretty much no low-end or high-end, and sometimes it sounds like it's being listened to through a telephone, which gets fatiguing really quickly. There are also panning issues, of all things; listening on headphones gets annoying fast when most of the sound is coming through only one speaker. It doesn't make any sense since the CD already sounds like it's more or less in mono to begin with.
Another deal-breaker for me is the awful sampling. The existence of the distorted and feedback-laden mouth-fart noises is just baffling. It sounds childish and irritating and has no place on any musical release. The spoken word samples aren't great either, although they do provide a well-earned break from the noise.
I suppose there probably is a niche demographic out there somewhere that would enjoy this, but even as a noise fan I'm not really feeling this. If you can tolerate the stupid farting and poor production it really isn't that bad, but I personally wouldn't want to listen to it again.
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