Christ's first full-length album is a dubby and thick pudding of scarydreams and rainbow-filled landscapes. Christ has been compared toBoards of Canada before, but I think it would be a mistake to leave adescription of Metamorphic Reproduction Miracleat that. The songs walk a fine line between static repetition andirregular activity. Keyboards will chime and gurgle while a solidrhythm runs around in circles in the background; they are inseperablefrom eachother and the effect of one relies on the effect of the other.As a result the music often feels like a blob slowly oozing its way upmy body. There are plenty of detuned tones and happy melodies, butthere is an added element (mostly in the early tracks) of horror, too."Lazy Daisy Meadow" features a sizzling electronic voice sufferingunder an overcast of humming clouds and "Dianoes Nouveau" is abrilliant dub-influenced piece armed to the teeth with anxiety,apprehension, and a stunning arrangement that coheres into a mass ofbeautiful melody. The manner in which Christ arranges his instrumentsis confusing at first. The music has movement and there's an element ofhip-hop in some songs, but often there's a feeling as if the music isonly producing the illusion of movement. The quality of the entirealbum is very organic and gooey. Metamorphic is neitherentirely dark nor wholly joyous; instead it strikes a nice balancebetween the two extremes that makes it listenable at about any time.I'd like to hear more from Christ, especially something focused on thesound exposed in "Dianoes Nouveau." Eventually the goo dries up and bythe time "School Is Not Compulsory" fades away I'm left feeling alittle teased. The same thing that makes the early part of this albumgreat ends up making the last part feel a bit drawn out: a little morevariation and breath outside the blob would certainly be nice.
Two new shows just for you. We have squeezed out two extended release episodes for this weekend to get you through this week. They contain mostly new songs but there's also new issues from the vaults. The first show features music from Rider/Horse, Mint Field, Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, Anastasia Coope, ISAN, Stone Music, La Securite, Bark Psychosis, Jon Rose, Master Wilburn Burchette, Umberto, Wand, Tim Koh, Sun An, and Memory Drawings. The second episode has music by Laibach, Melt-Banana, Chuck Johnson, X, K. Yoshimatsu, Dorothy Carter, Pavel Milyakov, Violence Gratuite, Mark Templeton, Dummy, Endon, body / negative, Midwife, Alberto Boccardi, Divine. Cow in Maui from Veronika in Vienna. Get involved: subscribe, review, rate, share with your friends, send images! |