It is safe to say that noise as a genre has officially achieved crossover status. There were hints at this before, such as Wolf Eyes landing on Sub Pop and delivering rhythmic, yet still brutal punk influenced noise and Prurient becoming a Pitchfork pin-up boy for the genre. Fuck Buttons (my early winner for subtle band name of the year award) have adopted some of the harsher elements of noise, but framed it with melody and other musical elements that somehow works.
I knew that the gentle chiming melody that opened up the "Sweet Love for Planet Earth" couldn't last for a band with this kind of moniker, and I was right.Not long after it opens a bit of overdriven amp noise and some pulsing bass mucks up the beauty.However, it never fully overtakes it, and even when the manic European style power electronics vocals rear their (intentionally) ugly head, the melody never goes away, it lingers very definitively.I know it is lazy criticism to make such comparisons, but imagine Whitehouse vocals and about half of the noise tracks layered with some excerpts from Aphex Twin's ambient work and that gives a rough idea.
Pretty much all of the tracks feature that noise infused overdriven synth sound to one extent or another, and often mixed with some form or variation of rhythm."Ok, Let's Talk About Magic" takes this template, using an archaic beat box rhythm that could have been a leftover from the early days of Esplendor Geometrico, manic vocals and…wait, who the hell invited Geoff Downes in to play keytar?Someone got prog rock keyboards in my noise, but for some reason I'm not angry.
A few tracks focus less on the dissonance and more on simply trying something weird, like the clattering tribal percussion and spastic tribal chants of "Ribs Out" or the Casio keyboard and monotone kick drum of "Bright Tomorrow."The latter is especially worth mentioning as it opens sounding like any sort of cheesy pseudo-disco club music imaginable before the jackhammers of noise knock the wall down and the unwashed masses bum rush the show (yo).
As a whole it is an odd proposition to mix chilled out synth oriented ambience with digital noise and most unhinged vocals this side of a Sutcliffe Jugend album, but in practice it is a refreshing take on two genres that can so often stagnate rather than continue to grow.It won't appeal to the PBR swilling mosh-pitters, but I think that is just fine with 95% of the universe.
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