Glowworm Zone

Stream-of-consciousness style ambient music. Tape fuzz, digital distortion, comforting memories and abandoned aspirations. With clever use of quiet and occasionally silent moments, Jurassic Period Dishwasher walks the line between closeness and vastness, often within the same track. The use of sound to create the illusion of motion through physical space fascinates me; resonant tones drift back and forth or swirl in circles around my head, sending me into a dreamlike state.

On "Fare Evade", a busy mechanical chirping is blanketed by a gorgeous, spacey drone which grows louder and stronger until it cannot sustain itself. Then it begins to ebb and flow while the chaos of the mechanical chorus continues beneath it. Like being kept from sleep by your own neverending thoughts, or lying in bed staring at the ceiling and imagining yourself floating out of your body. This is directly followed by "Apauauaya45Season", which feels like finally falling into peaceful sleep. The loop is a dream of a distant but familiar past, reverbating in time to the pulse of a heartbeat drum.

I doubt that anything I've ever heard or will ever hear can possibly match the bittersweet bliss that is "Crystal Palace". It seems uncertain, but its steady unsteadiness, the way it warps and trembles with regularity, somehow fills me with both desparate loneliness and hope.

Tracks like "ChunAUP,t6252wavVPSmile-105%_1000" and "We're Having an Idea" just engross me. They paint a vivid image of a place, a world I can only get a small glimpse of when I lose myself in their sounds. They're shaking the ground, they're changing every second, constantly morphing themselves into something beautiful and new. "Remember Old Phone Number" seems almost like a reprise of "Fare Evade", with a similar squeaky mechanical chirping and a drone fading in and out. But this time the noises are less disruptive. Instead of working against the synth, they work with it, carried along in its soft tide.

On this scale, even the smallest sounds capture my attention. Every tiny change is another important detail in the world of sound I am a visitor in. I want to observe it carefully. Am I alone? What kinds of things live here?

I'm enraptured by the inscrutability of this album's atmosphere, and yet while I’m here, I feel like I understand everything a little more. I want to stay in the universe Jurassic Period Dishwasher creates. It moves something deep in me. It puts a wordless voice to something I didn't know I was feeling. This album is very special.

Most of Shadows In My Scrapbook's one-hour runtime is taken up by four long, intricate ambient works. Each one builds up its unique atmosphere and, once it is established, pushes it forward to an intriguing conclusion. None of them are static or predictable; they all go somewhere.

The first, "Sunlight in my Scrapbook", couldn't possibly have a more fitting title. The way it effortlessly combines eclectic sampling with a bubbly, uplifting synth progression is commendable. The samples (apparently some are memos found on microcassette?) are cryptic, and vary widely in tone, yet each sample's placement feels totally natural within context. That's why I think the title fits so well. It's like flitting through the pages of a scrapbook, rays of sunshine falling on the pages and illuminating in turn different parts of one harmonious piece. Eventually, though, there are no more samples, and we stay with the jaunty ambient keys as they stroll leisurely to the conclusion, after which they're overtaken by a rising hiss.

"Jesse Doesn't Feel Pain" presents some very lofi, very detuned music where the high notes scream like sirens. They warp in circular motions without ever perceptibly looping, creating a storm of sound. Gradually, a much sweeter and calmer accompaniment emerges, which is a nice counter to the screeching chaos. At a point, the high siren-noise quiets down and then shines back through, recontextualized so it's less like a storm and more like the sun's glittering rays if they were hard enough to shatter glass by shining through it. When the piece finally breaks into its apex, it feels like nothing less than a beacon of joy and hope. It's perfection.

Sunlight gives way to shadows in "Nightmare From The Past", one of the most unsettling (if not outright scary) songs I've heard from Bug Bus Piano to date. It samples what sounds like a gong, clanging restlessly. These sounds multiply and overlap, leaving space between them, starting and stopping and echoing through the lofi noise like they're building up to an explosion. Instead they just distort faster and faster until they become a mass of convulsing, unsettling chirps. It's surreal and disorienting. A drone sounds like an alien choir echoing across a vast desolate landscape. It's everywhere until it's not, and then there's nothing but sparse piano notes. Fucking transcendental. I have tried, but nothing I write could properly capture the experience of listening to this.

"Burning Old Pages" is like if you combined a particularly frustrating piano practice with a successful piano impressionism performance with a tornado. Again, samples are used expertly. The section with the storm sounds is quite nerve-wracking, especially if you've ever been through a natural disaster. I have and this song put me seriously on edge. Though it was difficult to listen to at first, I love it. The rain and the cracking and the drone and the weird laughter are incredibly eerie and fascinating.

The closer, "Resemblance", is a simple but lovely 4-minute ambient track whose sound seems to flutter like a banner in the wind. It's an excellent and delicate conclusion to a chaotically beautiful album.

Now, I apologize for describing all the tracks in detail like I have, but I feel like I don't know how to talk about them otherwise. I listened to the album 3 or 4 times before I could even write this review. What can I say that would do it justice? This album is fucking great. Each wonderfully composed piece, bursting with emotion, contains within it a world of its own. It's like what I love about Jurassic Period Dishwasher, but executed in a completely different way with completely different components, so it's fresh and new. I loved it instantly, and as time passes, it may grow to be my favorite Bug Bus Piano album.

Not what I usually think of when I think of ambient music. Far more structured, with sweet synth melodies, tight drum programming and just enough repetition to evoke an interesting mood without getting boring. It's so perfectly layered. All the distinct sounds bounce off of each other and interact in intriguing ways.

But this is undeniably an ambient album, precisely because of that place and mood it evokes. This particular strength of ambient music is why I love it so much, but at the same time, it's ephemeral and escapes description. When I try to put the so-called place and mood into human terms words, it never comes across.

It's like watching the rain hit your window on a cold evening in early spring, or wandering around an office building in the dark. See, that doesn't really tell you anything. The best I can do is to say that this album feels extremely lonely. The way the carefully crafted pieces of each arrangement take turns repeating, stepping in and out of focus. The way they seem to dance around each other, forming something that is so familiar and almost cohesive but never completely gets there. The way they linger and echo into space. Even the tracks that sound more upbeat still seem like they're waiting for something that never arrives. It makes me feel so much without any words. It's great.

Captures summer moods perfectly. This album evokes memories of walking in the city on a sweltering day, or being stuck in your room watching the fan spin. It's fun and happy but in a way that brings out an underlying sadness. But at the end of it all you have "Geography" which just makes me grin and feel like it's all gonna be okay.

An interesting EP with a surreal, feverish vibe, odd rhythms, dissonant arrangements, and playful lyrics complete with obfuscated political commentary. All the ingredients are here for a totally decent experimental rock/zolo project.

And then there's "Booth". I don't know what to make of this song. It's haunting. The repeating melody is pure existential longing, and so are Sue Garner's vocals. It's cryptic and confused, and incredibly beautiful. I feel like I could write an essay just on this one song. But something about it still escapes me. I want to dissect and study it. What on earth did they do to make this song so maddeningly good?!

Admittedly, it flows a bit strangely in the context of the rest of the EP, surrounded by songs that feel noticeably less serious and earth-shaking. I enjoy the tangled mess of imaginings and satire over oddly sad instrumentals (or a goofy circus synth in the case of "Have a Nice Day and Fried Rice"), and I certainly love the big-band-esque instrumental of "Screwed's Crude, Screwed". But the only other time Fish & Roses truly gets close to the high of "Booth" is on the final track, "Apt. 31". For lack of a better description, it blends the best elements of the previous tracks to great effect.

Although far from perfect, this is a great debut. Those looking for the outrageous-fun variety of zolo will be disappointed, but what is here is something truly strange and special.

Whereas Grandma's Cottage has a rose-tinted view of the past, cloaked in sentimentality, Grandpa's Cottage goes in another direction. From the beginning of "cough medicine", with its ominous, growling progression, moving into the slow anxiety of "pipe", this release evokes bad memories and childlike dread. Things weren't really better just because you were a kid.

"rocking chair" sounds almost hopeful for a moment. It's beautiful and nostalgic as it builds, but just as quickly, it slows to an anxious crawl. "cellar" might be the most outwardly unsettling. It begins with a creak; moves slowly with stringlike synths, then coming together with the melancholy echoing of the higher, flutelike synths. Like most of the tracks, it ends pretty abruptly, which I think is a good stylistic choice.

The final track, "salty peanuts", concludes things masterfully. It sounds so wrong. It gives off the uncertain feeling of fear when you're a kid who doesn't understand yet what's going on and why this is the way things have to be. The EP ends with a simple, noisy scratch. No real resolution is offered to the listener.

This release isn't perfect by any means. There are things I can criticize; the coughing samples (and the guy going "oy-oy-oy") in the first two tracks feel heavy-handed and out of place, and it would have been interesting to hear the sounds developed further. I think it could have done more. But I really respect it for what it is, for bringing more tonal complexity to a genre that is, by its nature, typically overly sentimental and simplistic. (I should probably disclaim that Grandma's Cottage and other more sentimental comfy synth aren't without tonal complexity in their own way, depending on how you look at it, but that would be another review.)

Simplicity and sentimentality have a lot of appeal, admittedly. Yet romanticized depictions of childhood can also feel isolating when the reality is often much different. Grandpa's Cottage does what it set out to do. It's an interesting idea, and I'd love to hear more artists who take comfy synth in a less strictly "comfy" direction.

While the satire of Jewel's (still very overhated) dance-pop album, 0304, suffered somewhat from an inconsistent tone and general lack of pointed or poignant critique, "Intuition" does have something real to say, and says it clearly. Following your heart may sound like an empowering message, but your intuition is not your own, and what feels "right" to you is based on internalizing what you've been told since you were born. A message like that is still trying to sell you something—by getting you to sell it to yourself. Because it feels right, right?

So, okay, it's pointed, but whether it's poignant is debatable. Some of the lyrics are very silly. That's not necessarily bad. Regardless, the song is a jam. It's just a banger. For a simple girl in a world that is ever more hi-tech and digital, it hits. And the fucking accordion, God help me.

You can’t hide your love forever. While it’s not a line that actually makes an appearance anywhere in the lyrics, I can’t think of a more fitting title for this record. Every song is bursting with so much love and longing, amplified in the same way every feeling is amplified when you’re young and inexperienced. The pain of suppressing that longing, so strong you know you shouldn’t bother and you should really just tell them how you feel, but you’re so afraid of being ridiculed, you keep it inside.

Then again, if you cloak it in poetry, maybe you can say what you feel without embarrassing yourself so much. That’s why I wrote poems in high school. But there’s a sincerity and a self-awareness here that I never had when I was 16. The songs may reflect a naive, youthful sentimentality, but they also confront with honesty the immaturity inherent in that outlook, and the problems that come with carrying it into your early adulthood. Like in “Falling and Laughing”, an anthem on the foolishness of unrequited love, and all the hope, embarrassment and laughter it brings. Or “Dying Day”, where the narrator revels in dreams of running away with his love while shying away from any real plans or commitments. He keeps believing in his childish romantic fantasies even as the relationship is ending.

One verse in “Consolation Prize” always stands out to me: “I wore my fringe like Roger McGuinn’s/I wore it hoping to impress/So frightfully camp, it made you laugh/Tomorrow I’ll buy myself a dress/How ludicrous”. The first time I heard it, the suggestion of gender nonconformity as self-deprecation gave me mixed feelings. As I listened more, I realized why it stung. The deeply ingrained, painful feeling of inadequacy that these lyrics express so plainly—as someone who struggles to be seen as a man by others for different reasons, it hit a little too hard. That, and the refrain: “I’ll never be man enough for you,” sung sweetly in all its heartbreaking earnestness, like laughing through tears.

Through the deep sadness some of the songs are embedded with, they remain playful and twee, never losing hope that things will work out somehow. The instrumentals add to this feeling. All the many complexities of the lyrics are channeled through catchy ear candy that amplifies rather than diminishes their emotional impact. From the ragged bass and military-march drums of “Tender Object” to the triumphant guitars of “Satellite City” to the prominent pop soul-inspired sections throughout, Orange Juice push their songs above and beyond. The arrangements are always a little more than they need to be, and that makes them stand out. But underneath the glamor of the horns, organ, piano and backup singers, these are just excellent, tightly-written pop songs that would still shine when stripped down to their bare essentials. (Check out The Glasgow School if you don’t believe me.) Edwyn Collins’s unpolished vocals may take some getting used to, but personally, I wouldn’t have it any other way. His shaky, emotional delivery is charming and perfectly suited to the album’s vibe and lyrical content.

But of course I would say that. This album is of deep personal significance to me, and I can’t sell that significance no matter what I write. All I can do is attempt to justify it retroactively. It won’t necessarily have the same impact on another person—but then, it just as easily could. So give You Can't Hide Your Love Forever a chance; it may very well resonate.

An example of working within limitations to make something as good as it possibly can be, in this case, 8kbps mp3s. Yet when you're working within that kind of limitation, it's not always enough to be good for 8kbps, you want something that's good on its own merits. 8k Techno accomplishes this. The lobit sound works only to its benefit and contributes to its intriguing atmosphere. The 8k beat thrums on anxiously and I feel simultaneously trapped and hypnotized.

Something you might not know: I love clowns. For years, I wanted to be a clown. I practiced doing clown makeup, bought ridiculous outfits, and collected clown memorabilia. And to some degree clowns still hold a special place in my heart. I can't really explain why. Over-the-top silliness, bright colorful aesthetics, physical comedy… all of it appealed to me somehow. So of course, my interest was immediately captured by this clown-themed comfy synth EP.

I wasn't disappointed. As you might expect from the cover, Pooter the Clown leans less into silliness and more into the sad clown archetype. The way this EP alternates between dissonant, off-kilter circus music and soft, melancholy synth tunes while making them flow together cohesively is very impressive. "pooter's theme" and "showtime" especially work really well. Overall, the sound is simplistic, but effective and emotionally evocative.

It might seem ironic on first look, but this feels genuine in an absurd sort of way. The inherent melancholy of being a clown or whatever. This is too good. Clown synth is the best music genre I have just decided.

Immediately, I was drawn in by Galactic Sounds' presentation, since I'm a fan of space age pop and early library music. It's clearly very influenced by that style, but it's far from being derivative. On the contrary, Retep Folo brings a unique sound that still feels fresh and interesting despite its retro stylings.

Galactic Sounds' vision of space isn't empty and cold, it's vast and warm. It's playful, happy, and adventurous, like traveling through a friendly new galaxy with so much to discover. The songs are short and sweet, each one containing a perfect groove: a simple, beautiful little world to vacation in for a moment. Still, these songs are not disposable. The catchy, endearing melodies stick in your head, and the moods and imaginings they evoke stay with you for much longer. Basically, it's a vibe.

Entrancing vocal arrangements backed by repetitive 90s MIDI rhythms give this totalist-art-pop song cycle a really unique tone. It's kind of empty and cold. It's lonely, but far from lifeless. Still very human.

An album that refuses to focus on any one sound for too long. When you think it's found a groove it throws something absolutely ridiculous at you. Where am I? What are these strange noises and why are the colors so bright? Hey, that sounds nice. Now I'm being punched in the head repeatedly.

I listened to this during a library music binge, with the intent of putting it on my digital future library RYM list, only to immediately realize that it doesn't fit the vibe at all and is in fact much weirder than I anticipated. Probably the weirdest library music I've ever heard (so far). Noisy, droning, weird and grimy. I looked at a pic of the back cover so I could input the track list and saw that each track was accompanied by a short description. For example: "Industrial Ant's World Total Aggression" and "Ruthless automation of that land" and "A weird melody evoking the Nature is being devoured by the obsessional rhythm of that city". There's one that just says "AUTODESTRUCTION".

If you read these and listen to the music, you may be able to envision a low-budget surreal experimental sci-fi movie set on a hostile alien planet which literally eats itself alive. Or I did, anyway. But it's hard to imagine that this album, with its pounding rhythms and abstractness and dissonance, would appeal to anyone in search of tunes for their commercial project, unless that project fit that very specific vision the music reflects. Who was this intended for? Someone calls up Musical Touch Sound and asks, hey, do you have any scary music that sounds like a horde of evil robot locusts are cannibalizing themselves, oh yeah we have just the thing. "Insects World". No problem.

And what about "Underground Cathedral"? It's really good, but it's also a very screechy 11 minute long epic. My point is that this album doesn't strike me as marketable like most library music has to be. Not that I'm complaining, because it's great art. This whole thing has such a creepy and mysterious vibe to it. In conclusion, good album. My favorite track was "Metal Kit", which is a short one, but it hits just right.

All my favorite ambient & drone albums have something in common: they evoke a familiar mood or place. And for a lot of these kinds of albums, I have no idea what specific thing or idea they are evoking. That makes them even better, in my opinion. If it was a concrete thing, place, emotion, or idea, I might get bored of it, but it keeps evading me, so I want to go back to it and figure it out.

I listened to Place in World twice in a row before writing this. The first time I was captivated, and no less on my second listen. "Life Loop" starts off soft and peaceful, repeating itself over and over for 14 minutes as it gradually becomes noisier and somewhat more complex. "Cathexis 1" is a relatively simple, contemplative loop soaked in echoes.

The highlight for me is definitely "Held Meld". I like the loop here a bit more, it's faster than the first two and it does the same thing as "Life Loop" to an even more cathartic extent. Puts me in the zone. Its buildup is incredible—the loop itself seems to be deteriorating as more drones are added on top. Ultimately it soars into a siren-like sound and the original loop sort of decays. It ends abruptly. after that we float into "Cathexis 2," a nice reprise that adds more complexity to the loop of "Cathexis 1". A great way to end the album.

I didn't mean to write this long of a review but in conclusion it was good lol. Love ambient, love drone, love music that repeats over and over echoing in your skull long after you turn it off. My past self did not realize that excessive repetition can be such a good feature when it's done right and it's for sure done right with this album.

This is like a 2009 YouTube comedy sketch in album form.

…okay, it isn't so bad as all that. It has some fun beepy synth riffs and erratic rhythms. Sometimes I can get into it. It's definitely better where the instrumentation is more in focus than whatever bit the singer is doing. All the songs have a comedic element, but sometimes they're more bits than songs (see "Hyper Lenny") and sometimes songs that could be good are ruined by the singer's insistence on doing a bunch of silly voices (see "The Cockatoo Cries 'Zom!'"). I don't have a problem with silly voices, but you've gotta exercise some restraint.

If you have a particular sense of humor, you might love this, but I can't help thinking the album could be much better if Zom Zoms were less committed to the bit and more committed to the music. There are some standout tracks, though, particularly "Pray to Zom Zoms" and "Stubborn Best Flesh".