Senses develop with age. As a child, we tend to have a limited palette,with a strong preference for sweets and simple things. It's hard toenjoy something that can be bitter yet addictively desirable likealcohol, cigars, or raw fish. Likewise, it's also difficult toappreciate and fall in love with artwork that can be both incrediblysad yet stunningly beautiful all at the same time. With age, MattElliott has shed his Third Eye Foundation guise, stripped the layers ofdistortion, aggressive percussion, snotty song title humor, and theresult is beyond imagination. The Mess We Madeopens like an offpitch phonograph with twisted piano and hornsounds—muted, surrealistic, and ectoplasmic—accompanying his faint andghostly voice. (That in mind, it's hardly a surprise that the artworklooks more like a Brothers Quay production than ever before!) It's sad,mildy horrific, but captivating, almost as if Elliot is crawlingthrough the layers of freshly packed dirt from being mistakenly buriedalive. Over the course of the next seven complex miniaturemasterpieces, only rarely are electronic beats introduced, and whileit's not difficult to conecptually connect the dots to moments on thefinal Third Eye Foundation release, Little Lost Soul, it'stough to imagine this is the same person who cranked out some of themost clumsy, distorted noises on releases as far back as 1997's Ghost. Perhaps being a dad is what forced him to be quiet and work late at night, as The Messis very quiet, late night listening material. Tinkling melodiesfrequently play like cinematic themes by worn out music boxes,meandering in and out, mostly without rigid metronomic beats, allprovided by the deft multilayering of Elliot's voice, guitar, piano,bells, accordion (or melodica), and other instrument playing (with theexception of a couple female vocal bits here and there). Transitionsbetween drastically contrasting movements (from the beat-less score topost-drum 'n bass to a sea chanty) are amazingly seamless and fluid,and the eerie feel is never lost or compromised. With every listen Ifind myself surprised, frequently having to do double takes, kind oflike a book where you keep asking yourself "did I really just readthat?" Thanks to the power of media playback, rewinding andre-listening is possible, but like a David Lynch film, it's best toforce yourself to just sit there and soak in the whole damned thingstart to finish. Read More
