Mr. Klops, I love you but you’re bringing me down.
I had a visceral reaction to “Odessa,” and not in a good-want-to-barf way. That sound of math rock melding into nü-metal is painful. I can sort of appreciate the precision musicianship, but it’s been bled of heart and light and melody. It’s the sound of doors closing and walls appearing ever tighter. And aside from all that, it contains nothing that I admired about the Detachment Kit track—a slow burn, space between notes, raw emotion, an understanding that it was created by humans.
So I submit my own version of song-as-monolith, a recently dusted and polished track from Baltimore’s Lungfish, recorded in 1999 but finally given release in 2012. The slower—no, wait, I want to use the word ‘deliberate’ instead—tempo allows it to unfurl, giving you time to create peaks and valleys out of almost-imperceptible changes in the repetition. The drums pound rather than pummel, the multitracked vocal echoes across the valley. I respect the request to go heavy in this volume, but my version of heavy must be warmer and more organic.
m. joosse
Never Ending Internet Mix Tape 