MoonSpeak:
Der Bildungsroman
Apparently, this album was inspired by the work of Trent Reznor (Downward Spiral era). This is good news for me, as I'm the biggest Nine Inch Nails fan in the next hundred or so e-miles. But how much of his talent was harnessed, and which aspects of it were taken into account?
The Downward Spiral is a beautifully ugly concept album rife with the sort of abrasive cacophony that made soccer moms weep in the nineties, telling the story of a one man's crippling addiction, triumphant rise to power, inevitable downfall, and eventually, his grisly suicide. Though the record's periphery suggests only that of angst, avid listeners are able to look past the commercial material (March of the Pigs, Closer) and discover some of the most poignant and pertinent songs in Trent Reznor's repertoire (A Warm Place, Hurt).
Knowing this much, going into MoonSpeak's Der Bildungsroman, I can't say I know entirely for sure what to expect, or how it at all will tie in to the musical erudition found in Reznor's proposed magnum opus. For this review, any further comparisons between these two albums will only be in terms of their structure, lest I dilute the notion that Der Bildungsroman can stand on its own feet without living in TDS's shadow.
So, while TDS began its musical gauntlet with the sound of truncheons battering a man into submission (a sample from George Lucas's THX 1138), DB begins in a more mellow fashion, and these dulcet tones dominate the rest of the album. In particular, the atmosphere created by Ataxia is that of a shallow, empty longing--exactly the kind of atmosphere that songs such as A Warm Place create. It soon picks up, however, with the haunting ambience relegated to background noise, as a more spirited beat layers on top. The equally haunting, wistful guitar riff is probably the best part.
Indeed, what makes music so important and beautiful, in my opinion, is that particularly poignant threnodies such as A Warm Place often provoke the listener's thoughts, whether it creates imagery, inspires someone to act on their previous unfulfilled impulses, or helps deal with troubling memories. Surprisingly, Ataxia manages to pull this off, though perhaps not quite as powerfully as it could. In general, percussion tends to fuck up any attempts at imposing any measure of introspection upon your audience, especially when it overpowers the rest of the music--the first minute or so of Ataxia is my favorite, where it's solely the ambience and the guitar. If it was just that looped two or three times, I feel like it would have been fine on its own. Obviously, variation and progression is needed, too, but I just feel like the route she went wasn't the best. I felt thirsty and alone in the first thirty seconds, but then the song started having awkward mood swings.
"Downward" totally sounds like it was more from The Fragile, actually. Fuzzy, fragmented piano notes play over elongated oceans of synth. Again with that crappy cymbal shit, though. The cymbals are almost always too loud in every MoonSpeak song, such that I can tell how obviously synthesized they are. When electronic music sounds too electronic, it sounds robotic, and sucks the emotion out of what appears to be a generally pleasing song. I really love the glitched piano notes and the soft synth chords in the background.
Every song on this album has its own hamartia that either truncates or completely ruins the song for me. "Divine", the song's choice intro track, is pleasant, but unmemorable. "Egregious", as much as I love the word, did not need to have the silly and awkward first minute. "Exit Strategies" (title possibly a reference to NIN's "Various Methods of Escape", from their newest shelling-out, Hesitation Marks), despite having the best breakdown on the album (and perhaps in all of her music), has an extremely montonous lead-in that loops for a whole minute before the main riff arrives. Balance is the number one thing this album lacks, in almost every facet--from the volume and frequency of certain instruments to the structure of the songs themselves. As was a major issue with previous albums, MoonSpeak doesn't know when to drop a beat and layer something on top of it effectively, so that when it happens, you know it's a fluke.
Now, I don't know my music terms at all, but generally speaking, if a song is moving as slowly as "Exit Strategies" does, two bars of the same riff looped is enough. Instead, we have four repetitions--which gets monotonous, considering how long it takes for it to pass. I got the message of the noise upon the second repeat--when the third one sounded, I thought to myself, "Oh, great, here comes a fourth one..." and I waited as the fourth one inevitably came. Okay, now I get to listen to it four more times, but with a bass drum kick! Ugh. Again, the main riff, which is pretty solid, only comes in after a fourth of the song is already over with. That's a little problematic.
The only other song that isn't either blasé or potentially-great-but-not-because-of-repetition-or-other-such-tedium is "Drowned", which represents a lot of what I usually hope to hear when it comes to MoonSpeak's music. The beat, while not especially infectious, sounds mature in its design, though it also represents the furthest departure, from what I can tell, from the TDS inspiration. It's energetic, and it doesn't overstay its welcome, being a paltry three minutes long. It should be noted again, however, that there's still a deficit of songs on this album that have a satisfying finale. The fading-out-slowly trick draws attention to itself after the seventh or eighth time its been done.
The album contains two remixes of two unfamiliarly named songs, "Visibility Zero" and "Madchen Der Nacht". The former is quite boring, but the latter is actually the best thing on the album. It might just be another one of those fluke happenings, but here, the beat is catchy enough so that you can loop it over and over and not get sick of it. It's also quite fast-paced and dramatic, redolent of Castlevania or some shit. I dig it. It also bares no relation towards the Madchen Der Nacht you'd find on YouTube--which is something I have a slight problem with. If you're going to have remixes on an album, why would you NOT have the original songs readily available?... Doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Nonetheless, however, I'm glad that, despite the album only briefly reflecting anything remotely NIN-reminiscent, it does indeed stand on its own feet and an obvious growth in MoonSpeak's ability is present herein. Her only hurdles, from what I'm able to tell, are her concepts of composition, and most of what I had mentioned in the Heredity review still applies. The only thing preventing this from getting 4/5 are those issues, but I do believe that, at this juncture, this LP has contained the most songs that I've genuinely had a pleasure of listening to. I'm optimistic.
GEMS:
Ataxia
Downward
Drowned
Madchen De Nacht (Mourning Mix)
GERMS:
Egregious
3/5
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