MoonSpeak

Atmos

Not unlike most musicians, MoonSpeak's first forays into the harsh world of manipulating funny noises in an attempt to make them sound cool didn't manifest itself in the form of a full album, but rather, an EP. And while it makes a clear statement on what her music is all about (theme-wise), it does sound very much like that of a musical neophyte. It's a record that makes you think, "Well, we all have to start somewhere". It's very clear that it was made during the fledgling stages of MoonSpeak's music-making career.

The strongest track is the very first one listed, Solar Eclipse. Starting out with a gentle, slow beat with foreboding bass drones, giving off the atmosphere of an astronaut floating aimlessly through space, it slowly builds up, becoming more intense, as the astronaut in your head drifts deeper into the depths, and finally, the beat breaks down, becoming faster and more aggressive, as though the astronaut has found himself caught in the grasp of a black hole and is unable to escape. The cutesy little boops that had sweetly greeted themselves as the main riff of the song are now doubled up for a more urgent sound, and are interpolated within the danceable jam session of a breakdown that occurs around the two-minute mark. MoonSpeak has a very keen sense of when to add layers to a looping track, so as to not be too repetitive and monotonous. She knows exactly when to say, "Okay, that part of the beat has went on for long enough, so let's introduce a new cadence". It's an ability I find a lot of indie music developers lack.

The next couple of tracks, however, while clearly displaying a sense of effort involved in their creation, suffer from being extremely unmemorable. Unmemorable at best, lousy at worst. Whereas Solar Eclipse has the type of catchiness that'll get its beat to stick in your head for awhile, Orbit and Celestial Supremix, tracks number two and three, don't really last for me. Orbit is the kind of music you'd hear on the title screen of a 2003 space-themed flash game on Newgrounds. In other words, it sounds MIDI as fuck. The same goes for Celestial Supremix, though I must admit that that's easily the best track title on the entire record. They both have neat little tunes, but it's hard for me, personally, to get past the very stock, hollow sound that they both have, bereft of emotion, as if only the most basic rudiments of FL Studio were implemented in their construction.

The latter half of the EP doesn't get much better, if you're going to compare it to the very solid Solar Eclipse. Cosmonautical, track four, in particular, sounds like a dying Solar Eclipse. It's lower, slower, and uses the same general structure of the song we had only heard two tracks ago. It even has a breakdown just like it, but it's veritably more laughable, especially due to the (once again) MIDI-ass percussion that rapidly culminates into the outro that lacks any sort of satisfactory finale. This is where one of MoonSpeak's biggest weaknesses on this record lies: while she knows how to carry on a beat, she doesn't know when to stop, so she will oftentimes not end the song at all. If anything, she'll just have it fade out, but in some cases, the song will literally just stop. Blue balls. Considering the final track, Somewhat Disgruntled, ends in this way, it's a very underwhelming end to an underwhelming record that had promise.

All in all, there's only one noteworthy piece to be found on this EP. The rest is background music at best, but trite tedium at worst.

2/5