The World Pushed Against You, is a fecund fusion of sounds ready to ignite febrile synapses inside the brain in an album that is easy to stay glued to from start to finish.
A fecund fusion of sounds ready to ignite febrile synapses
The art of blending isn’t just for vintners, mixologists and coffee roasters. It’s also for audio alchemists who balance and perfect disparate ingredients into the potion of an album. Disparate elements and styles are interfused on the latest one from Shrimpnose, showcasing hints of folktronica, faint whiffs of R&B, soulful dollops of rhythmic noise, and drizzles of playful synth drones that are all assembled together in an artful combination. Then he dips it all into just a bit of cocktail sauce to ensure it has a hint of brightness.
Organic and electronic textures merge into seamless sonic tapestries, on The World Pushed Against You. Pulling aside the curtain on the creation of the album would be interesting, to be sure, but I’m not sure it matters how he puts all these sounds together in his musical chamber. The proof is in the pulsations on these energetic numbers that remain familiar but juxtapose that familiarity with a bit of alien prosody.
Consider the aforementioned folktronica. There is quite a bit of off-centered guitar picking going on across the course of this thing. As Louis Armstrong noted, “All music is folk music. I ain’t never heard a horse sing a song.” Louis hadn’t been around for the rise of AI musicians though, which might make horses sing one of these neighs. A lot folks these days make electronic music. It’s just what folks do, and here the guitar that might be otherwise acoustic and “folky” sounding is blended with bits of flotsam and sampled ephemera to congeal into a hobo stew of diverse ingredients.
“Siren Song” is perhaps my favorite track on this album. The way he uses guitar, bends it, blends it, pitches it down and upwards, to be heard in different augmented keys is a real gift.
Turbocharged drum beats and nostalgic voices emerge like hauntological ghosts on “Spider in the Window” that features work from guest Somni. I feel a little bit of Bvdub and Burial influence happening here with the vocal textures. Meanwhile blistered music boxes devolve into danceable breakbeat slices on “River Still Runs.” His beats have gotten more aggressive on this release, as showcased also on “Glued2” and it’s remix by Daedalus. The remix pounces like a dread tiger.
Shrimpnose said that he is “just so burnt out on lofi beats. It’s become the most boring, soulless type of music on the planet.” I can concur with Shrimpnose on this. There is only so much chill one can handle before you need to get up and do something, and after awhile lo-fi beat patterns all sound the same. This is evidenced by the seemingly billions of generic “lo-fi beats for studying” type playlists you can find all over YouTube and Spotify. So it is excellent to see him moving into percussive possibilities that are grizzly and guttural. All in all, The World Pushed Against You, is a fecund fusion of sounds ready to ignite febrile synapses inside the brain in an album that is easy to stay glued to from start to finish.
The World Pushed Against You is available on Nettwerk. [Bandcamp | Site]
