I suppose I should wait six months before saying everything I'll
regret later...
Perhaps I can only confirm what others have mentioned:
The vague hints at paranoia and evil, present in their earlier work,
have become overt. The voices, in the past chattering faintly in the
background, now often appear as a loud dissonant chorus, the interior
monologue of a paranoid schizophrenic, something you'd hear in horror
movies --the dream sequence in Rosemarie's Baby comes to my mind. And
I suppose my reference to a movie about a secret devil cult isn't an
accident, with the 66 min 6 sec album length. (hm...hexagons, huh?
six sided? !natas liah) and at least one song title with the Devil
explicitly mentioned. They've always balanced pastoral sounds with
distorted ones, but the balance is now strongly tilted towards
darkness, even terror.
I guess I'd have to disagree strongly with the person who posted that
it still sounds like happy music to him. It's really Bad Trip music.
They're connecting the dots between the visionary state of
psychedelic drug use, madness, the supernatural, and religion. And
it's Bad.
Even the use of children, to me, is reminiscent of how kids get used
in horror movies -- their innocence and vulnerability makes them
great foils (or conduits!) for evil. And then there's just the way
children are so protected in our society, the whole idea of
juxtaposing childhood with drug use creates a whole set of tensions
right there...
It's all so well-crafted. One of those few electronica albums with
both emotive/psychological content and well realized musical ideas. I
hear a lot of Beatles in there. There's a certain slow tempo thing
they do that's very White Album period Beatles (itself somewhat of a
bummer). And it's probably more of a coincidence than anything else,
but some of the collage bits remind me a lot of Revolution #9.
The hip hop beat thing -- I feel like at this point I grant it to
them because they do everything else so well. It seems a bit stale to
me. In a way, everything else in their music is evoking other periods
of music very pointedly, the hip hop beats seem like they're there
only because they've always done them.
And the voicebox thing (I'm afraid I forget which gizmo it is they
use -- the one that makes them sound like Cher). On the one hand,
it's interesting to see them actually singing a fair amount -- that's
a big change and it's surprising how organic it is to their concept.
But the sound of that box is way too identifiable...I go from being
lost in their musical fantasy to feeling like "oh, they're using that
box."
But those are just a couple quibbles. I'm surprised to like this
album so much. But I do.
k
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