Rapider Than Horsepower "Rapider Than the World" CD
[Alone]
This basically sucks and shouldn't have been sent to me for review. I like a good number of the releases on this label, but now and then they'll drop a real hunk o' crap, and this is one of 'em. It's horrible. I'm not even sure what to call it. Maybe retro weirdo electro garage junk rock? Wacky experimental indie hipster fruit rock? I don't know. But the vocals are fucking painful sarcastically spoken/"sung" (not really) with a shriek of high-end dramatization trailing behind them. Everything about this screams drug use. Hell, during some of the spoken passages the dude sounds totally fried. I assume some of this is supposed to be "humorous", but it's not funny, it's obnoxious. I mean, take what I said earlier and throw it into a blender: Smatterings of electronics, garage rock, indie rock, hipster bullshit, retro bullshit, maybe throw in some "roll around on the floor" emo/screamo, lots of drugs, a generally weird and quirky sense of raw and noisy irritation, etc. The tracks are all around two minutes each, some a little more, some a little less, but I mean, "Where am I Going?" tacks on almost 10 minutes of a looped series of keyboard notes over and over and over after a brief "song" (if you can really call some of these "songs"). "Wonder Why?" does open with a really soft melody and chilled out singing, and I'll confess that I really like that, not only does it shit all over the rest of the record, but I like it even ignoring the fact that the rest of the record sucks, so it's not good just because it's better than the rest of this mess. The droning melancholy actually continues for a few minutes as well, before the track ends in another 10+ minute keyboard loop, which segues into some comedic spoken word stuff. Of course the recording sounds like it was done pretty lo-fi, though oddly that's one of the only things that works. I don't mind the sound, I mind the music. If the songs were good the recording would work fine, it's pretty balanced and warm, the mix is decent, etc. But the songs blow ass, you know? The layout is a weird mix. The outer art sucks, but inside there's a wild collage of colorful photos and shitloads of handwritten lyrics and text that, while a huge pain in the ass to read, does look cool as hell. The lyrics are strange as well, seeming to mix a little humor with your average personal exploration kind of stuff, so nothing really grabs me other than the fact that the lyrics tend to be rather long and rambling at times. I've seen worse, that's for damn sure. This is a crappy release, though. I "wonder why" (ha, ha) they don't write more shit like the start of "Wonder Why?" Stop wasting your time, guys. You've got a brief few minutes of borderline amazing music wrapped up in a load of shit. There's only about 20 - 25 minutes of actual music on this thing anyway, but... there's still just that one chunk that's good. (1/10)
Running time - 50:16, Tracks: 9
[Notable tracks: Wonder Why?]
Alone Records - http://www.alonerecords.com

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