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Gardenbox, "Gardenbox"
For me, the best music is the kind that digs its way underneath your skin, and momentarily seizes control, allowing every note to hit you at a deep, physical level that affects your body, increases your heart rate, and opens your eyes to the easily missed facets of its design. On their latest self-titled release, Gardenbox reveals a keen understanding of this concept. The music touches on calm excursions of thought as well as massive experimentations of melody, drone, and energy that boil your blood and viscera.Poeta Negra
"Gravity" is incindeary, augmenting a simple piano melody with layers of glitch bleeps and heavy programmed beats. This layering finds each portion colliding with another to generate a frenetic, chaotic intensity which coasts along a forward moving beat, like speeding along the highway in a creaky, shaky car on the verge of falling apart. The track conveys a dangerous, determined sense that emits energy and thrust in short pulse bursts. "Sick of Everything" emerges with a deluge of thin, staccato beats slicing little nicks with an array of quick cuts. They drill wickedly as a low crackle and fuzz begins to bleed out from between them, tone and melody infused with static coalescing formlessly. A guitar drone finds its way to the fore, giving color to the shifting, swirling atmosphere punctuated by what sounds like a pinball machine violently turned on its side. Gardenbox crafts an amazing miasma of both direct punches to the senses as well as more subtle, sensual and textural impacts that wash over and envelop rather than stab. "You Can't Hurt It" is a patient, subdued track and the first to feature vocals on the album. It is a fine song, the speak sing vocals blend well with the restrained accompaniment but its quiet mood fails to set off the same chemical chain reactions in the brain that the instrumental tracks utilized to make your pulse dizzily synch up to their rhythm. Short interludes rest between the more meaty songs, often clocking between half a minute and a minute and a half. These transitional pieces aid the flow of the album by creating a familiar bridge between long pieces, and offering interesting ideas of their own through fuzzed out oscillations and unintellegeable vocal offerings. It might have been fun to have seen "Yes, We're Alive, Shouldn't We?" or "Inexpensive Ways to Fly" given the extended treatment (rather than the economy sized) but in this form they still manage to leave a great impression in the fleeting glimpse we are treated to. Beginning with canned horns and mid tempo percussion, "The Grief of Sadness" implies that it is going to follow this standard instrumental route for its entire ten-minute duration. However, it isn't long before modulation and synthethizers pop out, injecting the track with new life. In the midst of all this, the brass tones creep up and crescendo through the cloud of production beeps and drones giving the track a powerfully anthemic aura. Gardenbox is an impressive psyche freak out that finds its base in dynamicism and experimentation, 
