Considering that most all of the song titles are familiar here, and that the credit line says "all songs destroyed by...", one would assume that this Canadian duo has taken it upon themselves to create nine experimental noise compositions using existing hit pop songs as source material. Now, some people might frown upon that as "cheating" or whatnot, but I disagree. All of the source tracks have been chewed up and spit out to the point where you'd never know any better otherwise, so I have no quarrels with the approach whatsoever. And in fact, there are some quite interesting spurts of glitchy electronics fused with dark ambient undercurrents herein. So, there are only two things that bother me: 1. the songs are entirely too long, as is the CD-R itself; and 2. I don't like the fact that they left the song titles intact. Now, make no mistake, sans a few great tracks, this would not be a stellar release no matter what the song titles reflected, but I think it would've been a little more interesting and stood on its own a bit better atmospherically were the song titles totally independent of the source material. Perhaps it would defeat the purpose not to hint at what's going on there, but fuck it, because where the sounds initially came from makes no difference when you end up with damn near 10 minutes of cascading, ethereal, well subdued ambience such as that in "Where You Are". The similar but more loop based "The Voice Within" follows, getting slightly more aggressive in its use of layering and sinister backing textures for another effective jaunt towards taking something that sucks and making something intriguing out of it. Around the fifth track some of the swooshing delay/reverb effects start to get annoying because a very similar rhythmic presence is established in three successive compositions by what seems to be the volume of the effect alone, but other than that the general consistencies of the release aren't something that bothers me. "Wannabe" actually lets a few promising melodies and distorted percussive elements seep in for a more musical and structured piece, and I kind of like that - it definitely breaks up the monotony and provides a nice change of pace. A couple of moments in "I'm With You" and "Me Against the Music" get decidedly harsher and more abrasive, but I think I'd like to hear that contrast taken even farther towards a harsh noise fury rather than layering it in with some of the ambient effects that are already so prevalent elsewhere. The CD-R comes in a matte blue sleeve with a white paper sleeve secured inside to hold the disc in place. All of the printing is done in black ink and consists mainly of text, with an eye on the back and one abstracted image of Albert Einstein inside as a reference to the name of the project. Much of the text and images are slightly pixilated, but other than that it gets the job done for a D.I.Y. affair. If you care, the artists mangled herein are Jennifer Lopez, Jessica Simpson, Christina Aguilera, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Avril Lavigne, the Spice Girls, a double shot of Britney Spears, and then a song called "Somebody to Love" - which could be about a million different artists, I have no idea whose version they settled on. As I said, this isn't a great release, but there are some really solid tracks, so... I think it's curious what they managed to pull off here, and with a little more thought and manipulation I actually think they could make a surprisingly strong go of it. Not bad...
[Worthy]
Running time - 73:20, Tracks: 9
[Notable tracks: Where You Are, The Voice Within, Wannabe]
Worthy Records - http://www.worthyrecords.com
