Food For Animals: Belly (2008)

I wanted to do a noise/glitch-hop review so I could further delve into what my thresholds were for random sounds arranged into melodies, because I can bear some of it. Look at artists like Death Grips and edIT, who have enjoyed great commercial success for their use of harsh noise and "glitch-hop." These are two artists who have helped bring this sound into the mainstream, almost entry-level musicians of the genre, if you will. I decided to delve a little bit deeper and found a lesser known glitch/noise-hop group called Food For Animals, who provide a Death Grips sound sans a lot of the screamed rapping. Rather, Food For Animals' Belly employs a heavier, less poppy glitch sound than DG while rapping bars that you can actually make out. It's actually a lot less accessible than other artists of the kind, staying more true to it's genre than groups with more commercial success. There is a lot of harsh noise and static in the background set to the word salad FFA lays down, and just the sheer nature of the music makes it a bit iffy for conventional listening. The track "Belly Kids" provides a good example of what real, thick glitch-hop can amount to. "Belly Kids" may as well have been a hardcore cover of a Death Grips track, with one of the nastiest sounding instrumentals ever suddenly giving way to the psychedelic, ominous sounding whispers of FFA set to random samples. What keeps Food For Animal from falling into noisy dreck is the fact it's still a hip-hop album, and through and through they are considered indie hip-hop, subcategorized into grime/noise/glitch music due to their instrumentals, sort of in the same vein as an artist like El-P. The rapping on this album is actually pretty solid and helps complement and account for some of the aesthetic flaws of the  glitch instrumentals.

"Grapes" in particular helps highlight the rapping skills of the group while also reminding you why you're here: for a glitch orgy. "Grapes" incorporates and somehow reconciles a hip-hop sound akin to golden age 90s rap with hardcore club glitch sounds. It is actually a worthy track of representing exactly what is being attempted here. Unlike Death Grips who focuses on being noisy as possible on all fronts, or edIT who attempts to make the glitch melodic through expert turntablism, FFA insteads works on refining their hip-hop sound while letting the glitch freely flow wherever the hell it wants (check out "Yo" for some choice aural abuse.) It's a formula that sometimes work, sometimes doesn't. I ca continue to draw parallels between this group and El-P, a rapper/producer who raps intensively over dark industrial beats. Food For Animals is a way less refined, and more dirty and earthy answer to El-P. The difference is Food For Animals often delves into pure noise music and sometimes that is where they are at their weakest. I'm not saying "Virgogo" is an example of this, because I can only accurately define it as some sort of noise-hop dance instrumental and trying to give a qualitative ranking with nothing to truly compare it to would be stupid. Yet I will say that tracks like it are where I'm not really a huge fan of them. If you want to do noise/glitch-hop instrumentals you should at least try to make them sound less discordant. Belly stands out as a noise-hop/rap album but not so much glitch-hop album. In that field it's rather annoying.

Belly still provides a promising look at a perhaps promising group. Though Death Grips will always steal the stage in regards to the genre, I do find their sound somewhat better. There are just points where I could not bring myself to enjoy the album, much in the same way I could not appreciate the experimental madness of Takemura's Hoshi No Koe. "Maryland Slang" simply made me cringe, I find the crescendo into the glitch explosion absolutely terrible. I know Ricky Rabbit, the guys behind the beats of the album, is capable of a lot more with stuff like "Tween My Lips" and "Tween Fantasy," in which the glitch and electronic beats are enticing, melodic and actually listenable and the rap is solid. The rap itself is strong flow-wise and I have no qualms with any of the stylistic decisions of the MC, even when he crosses into raucous Death Grips territory with stuff like "Mutumbo." Their sound is unrefined but there is something good there, and I do know they had apparently tightened up their sound from 4 year before this album (according to Pitchfork, which I will take to be the truth, because I kind of fear what I might find if I tried to look up FFA circa 2004. I don't agree with the 8.1 rating, however.) Perhaps we will see something new from them that will take them in a better direction. Perhaps Food For Animals will break into the underground territory ruled upon by artists like El Producto.

Overall, the album is definitely not the best thing I've heard in awhile. There is a sort of disproportionate amount of noise to the actual good stuff. The raps are word salad and that is perfectly fine with me. I never faulted Aesop for not knowing what the hell he meant. The beats are sort of crazed and unpleasant but there is a semblance of something really cool somewhere in there. I wouldn't reccomend to this anyone solely around for hip-hop, because much of the unpalatable sound overpowers the rapping so completely all you can think about is when the track will end or at least get better. It's psychedelic enough if you're looking for something like that, but it's a far cry different from anything hip-hop styled that Tobacco did. I will mention that while it's worth a shot some of the stuff on here is on the actual harsh side and you should be prepared for that. Watch out for "Maryland Slang," "Yo," and "Bubbleguts/Territory/My Breath" in particular if you cannot swallow noise music.

I hope you enjoyed my review on Death Grips: Exmilitary!

I'll give this album a 5.5/10, was hovering on a 6/10 because of the pretty solid hip-hop work but there are other elements that forced it down a bit. Listen with caution.

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Return To Forever: Romantic Warrior (1976)

It's not very often I stumble upon albums that I consider true masterpieces, and rarer still do I find such gold outside of my favorite genre, hip-hop due to personal preference. Thankfully this blog has started to open my eyes towards gems in far-reaching genres that I confess to never have listened to in length. It is almost shocking and scary that I was so musically closeminded in the past, but that aside, it's time to delve into one of the finest works of technicality and musicianship I have ever heard. Return To Forever's Romantic Warrior may just be one of the greatest jazz fusion albums ever produced, a clean and dazzling display of guitar fretplay, electronic wonder, and smooth funk and jazz. This is a work that I can confidently rank up in my top ten albums, because everything about seems almost too perfect. The frenetic pace, the driving melodies and funky beats and instrumentals played off against some of the best heavy guitar I have ever heard in my life. This was a treat from start to finish, and the only reason I originally copped it was due to the album art. It's so funny how that works out, as if I were fated to come across this. Jazz fusion stands out as one of the most enticing and gripping forms of music you'll ever hear, and Romantic Warrior dishes out in glorious droves. It's almost embodies the late 70s/early 80s, bringing together ("fusing") various musical influences from those periods in one jazzy package. What if rock and disco had an illegitimate, but prodigal son? Is this what we would recieve? This is simultaeneously danceable and rockable. The tunes flow from cheesy to beautiful. There is little fault I can find with such an amazing display of skill.

Don't be fueled by the (balling) album artwork and track names, which fit the theme of a medieval epic. You're getting anything but a boring, heavy-handed medieval drama here. It is medieval only by the fact Return To Forever employed some use of baroque music throughout. Each track is a lengthy journey into jazz, breakbeats, electronic, metal and good old fashioned rock 'n' roll that any dad could be proud of. The funky opening track "Medieval Overture" sets the tune for what you're going to receive throughout this album. It starts off with a strange syncopated beat and rhythm, flows straight into flawless sounding guitar work, and eventially breaks off into the spacy unknown. Using the guitars in away only 80s musicians could, they craft an ominous, villainous sound at one point, a drippy computery tone at another, and something that I could only imagine to be the background music to a Speed Racer cartoon at other points. The funk's undeniable and you can draw parallels between the structure of tracks like "Sorceress," which employs actual jazz instrumentals (pianos and all that good stuff), with any archaic jazz. "Sorceress" stands out to me as the track where Return To Forever best demonstrate their jazz tendencies, with tunes that remind me of classic rnb, salsa and even early dnb. There is a lot of everything in "Sorceress," but this undeniable jazz fusion at it's core, with the guitar moving the track along at a smooth yet upbeat pace. This is the kind of jazz fusion perfection that even modern technical guitarists strive for (look at Animals As Leaders' Tosin Abasi) and its a sound that has surprisingly aged well despite the fact that elements that it used have not.

The guitar is so essential to the album, and it's what propels it into all its well deserved glory. It can restrain itself for a jazzy interlude but for most of the album its being played into oblivion, in a style that puts most metal musicians of the same era to shame. Part of what makes the guitar so enticing is the level of technical prowess. The almost robotic precision and speed with which each riff is played astounds me, and it's not your average dadrock-era hair metal thrash crap either. Instead, RTF provides you with a sound that has pizzazz and flair. It's not rebel without a cause rock where the dude is slapping the guitar with his palm. Instead, it's carefully constructed jazz and rock melodies, through expert use of the fretboard, meant to literally make love to your ears. The music almost seems to tell a story, albeit a very spacey and funky one. Can anyone say David Bowie starring in Knights of the Round Table? But despite all this, Romantic Warrior remains at it's core damn good rock music. Jazz fusion is the basically the definition of aesthetically pleasing music, in which everything fits together and it's pretty and it's engaging. That's one word to describe this album: engaging.

The length of each piece meant there was boundless opportunities for Return To Forever to tell stories and exhibit their repertoire. The final track "Duel of the Jester and the Tyrant" stands at 11:23 minutes long and demonstrates exactly what jazz fusion is. It starts with a funky, almost loungeish melody and gradually introduces the guitar, which fills that lounge with adrenaline and raises the intensity of the piece. This is the battle of the jester and the tryant! Soon we're invited to more mellow guitars and the other hero of the album: the electric keyboard, manned by Chick Corea. His keyboarding introduces me into a world somehwat akin to a video game. One can only imagine what the mind of Mr. Corea is like. He stands proudly with the guitarist and lets his heart into the keys, and even though its ultimately the guitar that steals the show, he provides a backbone in every track that is undeniably amazing. The use of electronic music throughout the album is what makes this an borderline danceable disco banger. Drawing upon the musical fads of the 70s, the electric wa-was and squeaks and squeals occasionally make you feel like you're walking through Chicago in bell bottom jeans, sporting an afro. The erratic, yet controlled nature with which jazz fusion crosses between the two genres make the album all the more seamless. Everything is kept moving along at a smart and fast pace.

Jazz fusion's, as well as this album's, strengths lie in it's technicalities. Yet there is still some great emotion to this album, such as the moments of baroque, or when RTF crafts their sounds and instruments to make a more futuristic representation of traditional medieval age music. This is one of the most fantastic sounding albums I have ever heard in a long time, and it's extremely well produced. The sound isn't something you would hear today, but it had definitely sown the seeds that would blossom into a lot of today's technical rock and jazz. The album itself heavily drew on actual jazz, and now it joins the cycle. Standing on it's own however, this album is an extravagant affair that works on all fronts, and is literally a jazz fusion opera. What if all 'rock operas' had been like RTF's and the other architects of jazz fusion? I know I absolutely despised Tommy (by The Who) and it could've stood some of that Romantic Warrior magic. It had everything you needed: funky piano and a guitar that literally sounds like a saxophone is even present in the titular track "The Romantic Warrior." Everything on the album is terrific and this is an absolutely essential listen among any genre.

I could harp on and on about this work and it's many aspects but the one thing that stood out most to me was that this band's sound basically embodies a perfect blend essential to jazz fusion. Wikipedia describes the genre as one "that developed from mixing funk and R&B rhythms and the amplification and electronic effects of rock music, complex time signatures derived from non-Western music and extended, typically instrumental compositions with a jazz approach to lengthy group improvisations, often using wind and brass and displaying a high level of instrumental technique." This better describes than this whole review sound provided here. I have often talked about variation in things like experimental and folk music, but with jazz fusion you have a sort of controlled variation in which the music bounds within set limits and draws heavily on what's inside these limits rather than being totally batshit crazy. As I've stated before, this is all about instrumental technique. I can also say these guys must have been absolutely crazy live, as much of this music is basically a bunch of extremely professional solos mixed together into one cohesive bastion of technical skill.

I often find myself at a loss to describe this work because I know so little about the sound. I've just thrown a lot of buzzwords at you this whole time but let me just stress to you that you should listen to this. It's an amazing work and one that makes 11 minute long tracks sound short and sweet due to the variation of music. This is undoubtedly the first 10/10 of this blog, and it's deservedly so. It made older generation rock music actually enticing to me! Wow!!

10/10-perhaps you may not agree this is 10/10, but going any less than 9.5, for me, would be doing this an injustice. You don't need to have a completely abstract sound to be truly great, as commercial as this music may sound to some, it is the best damn commercial sound I've heard in a long time. And this was produced back in the 70s.

Edit: 7/21/2013 - I have bumped this down to a 9/10, as upon some relistening I realized I was far too enamored with it. Most point still stand, but I do not consider this a perfect record, as I was so naive to do back when I wrote this. Still an essential recommendation for music lovers.

Nobukazu Takemura: Hoshi No Koe (2001)

It's really hard to describe exactly what I just listened to but regardless I'm not sure if I like it. Nobukazu Takemura's Hoshi No Koe is no doubt seen by many to be a transformative album of boundless beauty and deep meaning, but to my untrained ear it just seems a tad bit out-there. There is definitely beauty within the album, but the ugly glitch sounds that Takemura often employs create a dissonance and stand starkly against the pleasant ambience of the rest of the album. Am I supposed to somehow find beauty within this harsh noise? I admit that it's experimental nature accounts for the fact he employed glitch among all the ambience and drone, but there seems such a huge juxtaposition when you have tracks such as "In the room-roof-wood" which is a slow ballad of pure ambience and reflective beauty but earlier in the album you have "Honey Comb" which literally sounds like a computer raping itself over static backing. It's albums like these that force you to think and truly wonder just what the hell the artist was thinking. I say artist because this is undeniably supposed to be some abstract work of art. At one point in the album you have a 17 minute long track called "Chrysalis" in which the full spectrum of Hoshi No Koe plays out over one track. You think it will stay a slog of spacey drone but the track instead bounds through several different genres, including horrible-sounding glitch. It is total experimental, and it's thick, deep stuff that you can barely wrap your head around. I find myself unable to listen to anything else at this point. This album is by far one of the strangest thing I've ever heard. But does that necessarily mean that it is deep?

This is undeniably glitch, and this is undeniably ambient but it also has folk elements as well. The beautiful tune of "White Sheep and Small Light" employs classical instruments (is that a flute?) to craft a very authentic, very classic Japanese sound. However, we are immediately thrown into "Sign (Album Version)" which mixes together glitch, idm and dnb/jungle as well as makes use of a vocalizer. It's completely different, it could technically be in a totally different album. Did this guy essentially just record a bunch of different shit, all literally non sequiturs, and throw it together? It's almost like a sociopathic mixtape. However, both of the aforementioned tunes are melodic and can be listened to without any real problems. Many of the album's tracks are light, almost all making use of electronic music to craft strange and ambient sounds. Some however, are totally harsh and borderline unlistenable. "Trampoline" reintroduces the self-raping computer and is literally straight glitch. There is no cohesion with any of the rest of the tracks. At one random point there is a short sample of what I believe is a girl crying during a storm. But it's so short I can't make it out. It goes back to glitch and dissonance. Some people sincerely enjoy listening to random computer sounds. To them it is music, though don't really understand the significance myself. It does stand testament to finding beauty in all things.

Hoshi No Koe is something I can confidently call an eye-opening experience. It crept up on me and held on to me. The first track lowered my guard, and I expected a peaceful ambient trip into dreamland. Instead I got the mad delusions of what could either be a visionary or just a batshit insane Japanese man. Halfway through Trampoline there is a sample of a bird call. What the hell is that supposed to mean? Did Takemura believe this fit in like a cog in a set of gears, or was it just thrown in there much in the fashion of some dude throwing paint on a canvas and calling it art? I don't want to get into that debate, in the end this is just plain interesting to me and I can't confidently say it's not music, because plenty of the tracks on here aren't glitch orgies and are simply experimental tunes. Take "A Theme For Little Animals" which incorporates brass, woodwind and various other instruments (including what is probably an electric keyboard or synthesizer.) I suppose you are supposed to an imagine little animals walking around in sync to the music, kind of like the old cartoon. But the tune is so weird you can only imagine what kind of crazed, depraved shit these small woodland creatures are doing. Regardless of how it sounds, there is still a fascinating and altogether entirely listenable quality to it. Each tracks seems to stand on it's own, almost as if completely different artists worked on each.

The track's outro "The Voice of A Fish" employs sounds of water and strange drone noises and other forms of incessant noise, and it serves as a perfect outlook for the entire album. It's noise. Beautiful noise, harsh noise, strange noise, ambient noise. We can debate and argue for years over whether noise qualifies as music. All music is noise, right? But is all noise music? That's the question posed by Hoshi No Koe, for me at least. The first track of this album is basically light synthpop set to sounds of birds and wind. The second is a jazzy tune, an idm beauty that easily stands out as the most melodic and rhythmic of the album. However, the third is simply glitch. That's what I mean when I say this is truly a mishmash of sounds to the point each could've been done by a different artist. Hoshi No Koe is an essential listen for anyone who wants to try true "experimental" music. I can't say I enjoyed all of it, but I feel as if the terrible and harsh parts, the parts that make you cringe and groan, are absolute essentials. The album wouldn't be as strange and enticing without the harsh bits. What would it be without the strange dissonance? That's what makes Hoshi No Koe so special.

I'm not sure if I like this, but it's certainly one of the most important things I've ever listened to in that it's made me think and it's changed my outlook on music in some ways. I suppose this could be considered baby's first experimental experience- I find stuff by Merzbow and the rest of the field recordings crew absolute crap. What makes this bearable is the fact it is not just glitch and noise. It is an eclectic mix of various forms of music. I can't listen to just noise. If this had been all "Honey Comb," I would have panned it. Easy 0/10 for me. maybe that's just me being shallow. Yet I find harsh noise albums terrible! Perhaps this work will better help me understand what that kind of stuff means? Whatever, the point is this is a strange album, but it is still bearable. It is like a gateway drug into higher things. Things I really don't want to associate myself with. Hoshi No Koe is just enough outside my comfort zone that it makes me think but does not repel me away. That's why in the end I find it an essential listen. If you are looking to break into true experimental music but are not ready to get you ears rammed with a hot poker or simply bored to death, then Hoshi No Koe offers a diverse palette of sounds that crosses between countless genres.

I give this album, after a lot of thinking and deliberation, a 8/10. Simply because it made me think and challenged the conventions of what we deem 'music' in all its discordant wonder. When I first listened this was a 5/10 solely for the strange glitch shit. But that would be doing the album an injustice. The rest of it is definitely amazing. The glitch tracks are a controversial and touchy thing for me. I don't find them deep or meaningful, but perhaps they are? I'm not sure how to proceed with them. I may end up giving this a second look. Until then, I'll just leave it at 8, which is a safe enough score.

Download (filesmelt)

Subtle: for hero, for fool (2006)

I was looking for this album for a long time and I finally found it via a /mu/ request thread, so I naturally downloaded it at lightning speed and then promptly let it sit there for a week before actually listening to it. Now that I have a chance to finally get my thoughts out on music and stuff I felt that I couldn't possibly continue without covering this strange gem. I think what stands out most about Subtle's for hero: for fool is that it's an amalgamation of indie rock and rap, all with a great lo-fi feel. Also what stands out is the frontman/MC of Subtle sounds like an indie singer forced to rap. The result is a strange, raspy sounding style coupled with a frenetic flow. Regardless of this, you don't really come to fh:ff looking for a "hip-hop" album. This could be reviewed as a rock album as well. Through and through it's a literal hard soup: hard rap and hard rock streamlined together into one strange sound. You may often wonder what would happen if Linkin Park and Cypress Hill didn't completely fucking blow the rap/rock genre into parody. Subtle offers a respite from those clowns with a sound that deftly incorporates rock, rap and electronic.

What I get from Subtle is the feel that these guys have some direction, but they still don't know what to do with their sound yet. It's so erratic, so emotional and so "out there." I feel as if these guys can barely contain the energy and feeling built up inside them. Sometimes Doesone's rhymes are literally tumbling over eachother, just pouring out as the rock beats on and you get the feel this band is on the edge. When it devolves into just a instrumental hard rock interlude, you can imagine they're recollecting their thoughts, gathering their composure, and reassigning that raw feeling into the instrumentals. I got that vibe with "Return of the Vein," which I can only describe as the buildup to some sort of anarchistic romp. With Subtle, all I can see is those big dudes from Where The Wild Things Are. These guys have basically created a soundtrack to a child's raucous, crazed dreamscape. There are no rules to their music and it's childlike, rebellious quality basically reminds me of throwing eggs at people's houses. Indeed, Subtle serves as a better voice for our generation than fun.'s lighthearted, anthemic crap could ever be. These guys pretty much know how to translate youth into music. It has to be crazy, it has to be fast and it has to be loud at some points and restrained at others. I mentioned Subtle doesn't seem like they know what they can truly do yet. That massive potential and talent is there, but you're not sure what to do with it yet. Isn't that what growing up and being a teenager is like? Even the album art hearkens back to some crazy shit we'd imagine in our dreams, or maybe after a tab of LSD.

Subtle's a rock band/rap group hybrid and they showcase this to the best of their ability. They also demonstrate some considerable skill with electronic music and production. But their appeal, for me, doesn't lie in their technical prowess (which they have plenty of) but in the feel of the music they've produced. It'd be hard for me to list Dose as one of my favorite rappers ("Midas Gutz" notwithstanding, it's easily one of my favorite "rap" tracks on the album and deserves a listen from anyone in the backpacker crowd.) and harder still for Subtle to break my top ten list of "rock bands." What they bring to table for me is that raw emotion that defines tracks like "Bed To The Bills" or "Nomanisisland." Whether Subtle's laying down bars or riffs, the fact that it's so unrefined and real for a studio-produced album gives me the chills. You won't be finding impeccably produced youth anthems but rather bangers that you could imagine at some sleazy indie venue or your best friend's garage (complete with empty bottles of Jack Daniels.) The rasps of Doseone and the occasional melodic backing vocals are raw and visceral. They can build tension and make you feel like you're ready to go ten rounds with a bear.

Part of that blood-boiling, adrenaline-filled aura they give off is thanks to the rock aspect of Subtle's repertoire. The heavy-handed, hard as stone riffs and drums lay on you in a thick haze worthy of any 20 year old basement rocker. They often switch off the rap completely to display their instrumental rock, with occasional crooning from the group that almost makes your forget for a minute ago they sounded like underground battle rappers. They certainly know how to sing as well as rap- "Middleclass Stomp" is an especially good example of their work as vocalists- and they can hold their own weight through minutes-long guitar slams and drum work. I was never once bored with the instrumentals, despite the fact the last two tracks stand at seven and eight minutes long, respectively. If you want me to sit through a goddamn eight minute outro, you better be enticing. Luckily, Subtle's knows how to bring the ruckus and keep your blood pumping even during the slower refrains. It's good-ass music.

If I were to nitpick I'd simply have to say that some of this music is a bit on inaccessible side. "Middleclass Kill" has some harsher, more ominous sounds that lightweight listeners might shirk from, and throughout the album Dose and Subtle have a tendency to be loud and proud. It's not easy listening in any sense of the word. Rock purists might find it a little too heavy on the hippy-hop side, but it's definitely an alternative masterpiece and offers enough to please even the "rap is crap" dreck. If you're here looking for hip-hop, however, they deliver plenty on that front with sick tracks like "Midas Gutz." for her: for fool truly does wonders and could please those on both sides of the spectrum. It's easily one of the coolest crossover albums of the decade. I just hope you can keep up with it, and maybe hold in the impulses to rob a liquor store with your buddies.

for hero: for fool hits the mark, and gets a solid 8/10

Meme: Chitotetochi (2005)

Hey look a japanese avant-folk album nobody has ever heard! Chitotetochi is an album I found while perusing a blog about music I use to find music to listen to. It seemed weird and out there enough, like all folk music does, that I could review it as my follow-up to the acclaimed Chief Keef review. If I had to describe this album by relating it to an experience or object I would say this is the rough equivalent of sitting in a city park at 2 am and looking at trees. At one point you see a drunk old hobo stumbling around the trees, at another there is nothing but silence. That's the feeling I get from this. It's weird and I can't say it's all that comfortable. This is really my first attempt at reviewing a folk album so it's hard for me to sound qualified at all. I'm not actually qualified I guess. One disadvantage I have here is I can't really name any of the tracks because they are all in the strange moon runes of the japanese language. So I have to really speak in general and about the album as a whole. Bear with me on that.

Anyway this album can give you a lot of freaky feelings because it's not as tame as traditional folk shit you'd hear. It kind of feels like I'm listening to some Japanese sorcerers working their shit on me, especially during the third track where you have this long instrumental interlude with strange wailing sounds and a triangle. This  has a lot of everything in it and to be honest you have to hear it to fully get a feel for what this album is like. I speak from experience that Japanese folk has a certain quality to it that makes it flat-out weird. It's usually hard to get over some Japanese vocals especially if you hate stuff like j-pop (I definitely do.) Sometimes vocals in a different language can be really alienating. Try listening to artists like Midori and you'll sort of realize why. Luckily this album is definitely not reliant solely on its vocals department, and lets the strange ass spacey instrumental folk rhythm do much of the talking for much of the album. The talking equates to a sage on a mountain telling you to eat a hot coal and prepare to immerse your mind in some sort of meditation-induced bliss while doing so. And the vocals are dreamlike and soft-handed enough to bear, none of that plastic extremely grating Perfume shit. One thing that did alienate was the first track, in which Meme repeatedly drone the name of the album. It's hard to swallow but it's just a small hurdle to rest of the album, which gives you so much more.

The intonations you'll hear throughout are spooky as anything you'll ever hear. They're not harsh, but there is a noisy quality to what I'm hearing from this. It stays melodic however. It's really an eclectic mix of sounds I'm at a loss to describe. At one point I even thought i was hearing some jazz influences in there and that really tripped me out. Jazz doesn't belong there man.... it's an instrumental mash and you'll never really know where it takes you so just buckle the hell up. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone who pigeonholes themselves into any genre. There are times where everything devolves into insanity and you just wonder what the hell you're listening to, and that's a kind of feel you won't like if you're a hardcore fan of hip-hop or jazz or techno only.

Even fans of japanese stuff should beware essentially because you don't want to fall into the trap that all japanese music sounds somewhat similar. There is a lot of ambience and sad refrains (see track 5) you'll find in tamer music of the region but it's still labeled "freak folk" by some for a reason. Because all of a sudden that sad refrain is jarred by some quick guitar slamming and suddenly the tempo is rushing upwards (like your blood pressure if you're not used to this stuff.) Meanwhile something that sounds like a ghost crying in the background grates on. Suddenly the guitar twangs loudly again and then that mysterious female vocalist croons on again in a much more upbeat tone. Later on, an entire track drones on and suddenly it's feeling 10 PM and you're ready for some hardcore sleeptime. Listening to this makes me feel as if my ears have been drugged and have no recollection of what actually happened to them. They haven't been raped with a rusty steel pole a la Merzbow, but they certainly haven't been tucked away for the night by Shugo Tokumaru either.

A quick addendum though. Especially later into the album, there is a lot of dreamy, cloudlike quality to the music. Some of it could put you to sleep. Certainly a strange transition, but folk has never been known as a musical genre to take ecstasy to. The occasional jilting guitar twang here or there, but Meme's vocals definitely are on some lullaby levels.

The variation in styles, rhythms and melodies of Chitotetochi places it on a special pedestal for someone like me, who really values the unknown and experimental. The frequently erratic nature of the music and it's almost childlike sporadicness, juxtaposed with the dreamy quality and it's almost sleepy refrains, definitely make this an experience for someone who just listened to the entirety of Chief Keef's Back From The Dead with the intent to write a review about it. It's different... but I like it. The combination of the sp00ky and the serene of this "freak folk" is definitely something to try. One qualm that can be raised with the album is to the impatient it can seem boring. Certainly there are some boring elements to it. Occasionally I'm just sitting there waiting for the light and fluffy dream songs to be assaulted by some random instrument or change in vocals. Sometimes that never comes, and I can appreciate the beauty of those pieces. At least the wailing ghost is always there for you. (Well, not always.)

Again, I don't recommend this to any purists or anyone looking for something really constantly upbeat. But you should do well to remember it's not exactly par for course folk either. You have one or two songs that stay mellow but others that go all over the place. It's a mixed bag of music and sometimes it can be weird as all hell, but sometimes it can be really great too. Even when you wish that wailing ghost would just can it and let you listen to mystery japanese girl vocalist sing. Meme is a cool listen; give it a shot and you may just feel like I did. Or you might think it sucks and that;s no sweat off my back. Opinions are opinions.

This gets an 7/10! Hooray.

Download (mediafire)