MoonSpeak

Heredity

My last review of MoonSpeak’s work was back in her “groundweller” days, and since then, four new records have been produced in my wake. In the past, I criticized her apparent lack of ability to design a consistent craft that produces a sound that, while pleasing to the ears, doesn’t at the same time overstay its welcome.  It’s simply not enough to have a catchy beat if all you’re going to do with it is loop it for five minutes (or more!) and call it a fully developed song. Even having said that, there’s only been a small handful of choice-cuts that inspired anything more than a “that was neat” from my perpetual, acrimonious cynicism. I also mocked her propensity to add trendy little ties to her song titles (with cute little gimmicks like using foreign languages and symbolic binary), which should tell one a lot about how much of the cadences within are of any noteworthiness or appeal.

You can’t quite call me her biggest fan, musically. Or can’t you? Just as the silly football fan who suffers an abysmal season still happily (and perhaps haplessly) latches on to his or her team for the next upcoming year, regardless of their performance, I’ll be here doing the same sort of thing for MoonSpeak. I want her to do well, and she’s not going to do well if she continues to release loathsome dins like “Crushed in Orbit” (from “Manifestations”) or humdrum, half-assed efforts, like those found in “groundweller”.

So, given my standards, how does Heredity stand up? Well, I can’t remember a single song from it, and I only heard it an hour ago, so as I write this, I’m re-listening to a bunch of key songs simply for reference. There was absolutely nothing outstanding about it, and nothing was particularly abhorrent, either.

Right away, however, you’ll notice the first four song titles. I was never a fan of gimmicky shit like this, and it doesn’t even work in this album, in any which way. Gimmicks, where we have a song creatively called “Romp” and then a song ingeniously called “Stomp” in subsequence, only work when the two songs have some sort of cohesive tie about them. And after listening to both of these (drab, lifeless, soulless) tracks, it could be said that these two songs have literally nothing to do with each other. They don’t even segue into one another, which is probably the worst part, especially in regards to the next two tracks.

The song “Sub Zero…” alone has an ellipsis, for what reason? The following song is entitled “…Is Now Plain Zero”. Oh, wow. If that isn’t the cheesiest thing I’ve ever seen. Indeed, while the latter song does appear to be a slightly more pumped up version of “Sub Zero…”, I still cringe at the thought process of these titles. If one were to listen to this album, and someone asked, “Hey, what’s that song you’re listening to called?” you would have to say, “Oh, it’s called ‘…Is Now Plain Zero’”. Does that not sound extremely awkward to you? Indeed, this will ensue an awkward exchange about just what the hell it is you even said at all, why the song is called that, why the artist decided to do that (because it’s hip and edgy and innovative or something?) and this is why you don’t try to be cool with your song titles.

Now, on to the music itself—the important part. Heh.  Gosh.

The beginning four tracks, cringe-worthy attempts at binary aside, lack the sort of energy or life that the beginning track(s) require. With the crap I choose not to deal with in the music industry nowadays, I wouldn’t ever see this as a worthy alternative, simply because it didn’t excite me. You know how they always tell you that you have to begin a story by having the first sentence sort of invite the reader in? It works the same way with an album. If the first sentence provokes interest, the reader will WANT to continue reading. If the first scene in a movie is exciting, but in need of context, the audience is going to want to see the rest of it. I’m not going to feel very compelled to listen to your musical album if the first song sounds like you testing out the sounds you CAN make, rather than you claiming it’s an actual song.

If MoonSpeak was attempting to let the listener in, make the listener want to listen to the rest of the album, then the tone the first song creates is that of mediocrity, not out of any level of incompetence on her part, but in that the song doesn’t reward the listener and it doesn’t get anywhere. If it did, I’d probably feel compelled to listen to the album again on my own accord. Some artists employ an intro track, one that’s less than a minute long, and serves only to give the listener an idea about how the rest of the album will play out.  As they are most always instrumental, I think it fits right in with MoonSpeak’s style, and if she ever creates a concept album, that would be the most opportune moment to implement the concept.

“Skree Skree, Cindy” would have been, in my opinion, a much better intro track, because it almost entirely represents exactly what I think the album is about. Taking a short string of notes, and then looping it over and over. I’m not going to go on about how much the nature of that kind of music irritates me, because I’ve done so already, and this album was released only a month after. However, this is a good song. But by the third minute, my foot was tapping. Not because I was getting into the song—I was starting to get bored of the same noise droning on and on again with the sporadic percussion interlaced. I really gotta question why these songs need to be more than two or three minutes long. A generic beat can only keep my interest for so long before I have to strain myself to continue listening to it, hoping in vain that it will change It up somehow. For the sake of making things easier for me, here’s a list of songs on this album that follow the general rule of “generic beat that goes on forever and bores you to sleep”: In Mind and Body, DBMK (one of those things where you just kinda have to “know” what it stands for, or you’re just not cool, I guess), X-Core, Tulpa. And all of the first four songs aforementioned. So, over half.

Of course, there were some pleasant surprises here and there. I think the strongest track is actually one called “Shou-chan with SP00KY SKELETON”. I’m not sure if that means the song was created by someone called Shou, and features some guy with an irritating leet-speak-ridden name, or if that’s actually what the song is called. Either way, it’s the best one on here, despite the fact that it is indeed over eight fucking minutes long. This is because it’s one of the few songs on this entire record that actually progresses, and is actually a fun ride to listen to. It’s also the first time in a long time where the title of the song itself actually coincided well with the sound of the music. It does indeed sound quite spooky. The cymbals near the beginning kind of ruin the atmosphere, likely due to their shitty placement and timing, but all in all, we have found the hidden gem.

There was at least two or three instances on this album where a song started out decently, but then it all gets fucking ruined by the inclusion of some tinny-ass noise like a cymbal or a repeating bass drone. It’s almost like MoonSpeak is under the impression that an electronic song MUST include all of these instruments, or it’s not a full song. The first minute or so of In “Mind and Body” had the synth chords playing, and it was actually rather nice, until the percussion came in and tried to make it some dance-y shit, when clearly, the song was asking me to stop and think for a minute about my life. It killed the immersion, and I actually got annoyed. Another case is found within “Gold Plating is Skin Deep”. The first ten seconds of the song was a breath of fresh air. It was calm, modest, foreboding… And then I’m getting attacked by shitty, generic bass drones that are COMPLETELY out of place and quite literally sound like shit. The constant flatulent noise produced by these things was enough to make me burst out laughing upon my first listen, first out of the sheer absurdity of it, then out of disappointment, because the song would have been much nicer without this ridiculousness. Oh. And did I mention that the drones themselves are completely out of rhythm? Yeah, great… The song then devolves into a clusterfuck of electronic nonsense, and at this point, I had already determined my thoughts on the album as a whole.

I should address finally the song Tulpa, as it features another vocal performance—female this time (though, still likely not MoonSpeak herself). The last song that featured vocals in it was in “Manifestations”, and it was harshly castigated by me for being: 1.) completely out of place, 2.) completely out of rhythm, 3.) lyrically narmy to a cringe-inducing extent, 4.) melodramatically delivered, to such a level where I felt embarrassed for him, 5.) overall just shitty. I wasn’t the same after hearing it, so when I heard vocals in this piece, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that it was tolerable. Heh. I mean, this is what I’m reduced to. I’m impressed by adequacy.

No, though. That’s just the vocals. They were okay. Whoever she is, she’s a much better singer than the whiny narm-child from “Manifestations”, and all of the flaws I listed above do not apply. Her voice does fit the tone of the album, and I like how it’s introduced at the very last song on the record. I can’t make out any of the words, but I don’t think it matters all that much. I mean, I don’t even care! I don’t hate this! It’s so exciting! …Oh, except I do hate it. The music itself is just more of the generic, repetitious crap, but instrumentally, it’s the shittiest thing on here. The cymbals are so out of rhythm. That’s actually a huge issue of mine, when things aren’t in rhythm. You can do things intentionally, sure. Maybe they were intentionally placed completely where they would sound the worst. But that doesn’t really make it very fun or pleasant to listen to, does it? No, it’s really just about as detestable as the song’s namesake, the mystic concept of the “tulpa”, is. I'm not gonna say it's a "germ", though, because the vocals did create an incentive for me to listen to the song, and they weren't horrible. So, it had that going for it.

Indeed, I can’t say I’m disappointed, because within the time this album was made, I had written my reviews about two or three weeks prior, and it’s been four or five months since the album has been released. A lot of the techniques used (and not used) may have/n’t been implemented in future releases, which I will be also listening to as soon as I finish typing.

Riiight…

Now.

GEMS:
- Shou-chan with SP00KY SKELETON

GERMS:
- Gold Plating is Skin Deep

GENERA:

- Practically everything else. Your mileage may very...

3/5