Quant
Quantastical Quantasm
(Dot Recordings)
This is one of the more strange releases I've heard in awhile, and it's not because the music is particularly out-there. Instead, it mainly has to do with the weird juxtapositions that happen on the release. While most of the music falls into a fairly unobtrusive light electro-funk area, there are some absolutely strange lyrical turns on the release that for all their outlandishness, actually add quite a bit to the songs in general. In actuality, I'd like to hear more chances taken with the music itself, and I think it would make for a much better listen (as it is, the 10 track disc drags a fair amount at over an hour long).
Despite the excellent song titles, much of the album simply fails to do much, and that includes the very first track entitled, "Sauna Grease." Although it's nicely put together and has some soothing sounds that give it sort of a tripped-out keyboard funk feel, it just doesn't hold an attention span very well. That entirely changes on the second track, though, with the addition of some of the wacky vocals that I was talking about. As if you couldn't tell from the title, "Murder Icecream Foreplay" is easily one of the most interesting tracks on the disc, and not only do the completely nonsensical, stream-of-consciousness vocals flow nicely, but the music on the track is menacing and playful at the same time with a thick upright bass sample and some eerie progressions that play off in the background.
Things lapse back into the same sort of mellow grooves after that again and after the indecipherable vocodored-out vocals of "Nelly Disco," another track with actual vocals drops in "Tik Tok." The title isn't as interesting as the first vocal track, and neither is the music really. Fortunately, the vocals are strange enough again to keep the attention span, including a whole verse that mainly just works as a way to get in some scatalogical humor and name-dropping (the second time in two vocal tracks that "Quant" is mentioned more than once).
The end of the album is pretty hit-or-miss as well, and while is pretty much all coasts through sort of a downtempo groove, although the track "Slide" provides a well needed break with a faster pace and vocals that are pitch bent so they sound like the son of Barry White one minute and the congested and creepy Barry White the next. The epic trip-out of "Blue Balls Baby" drops almost all of the flatulent keyboards in favor of dreamy sounds and it provides a nice drift toward the end of the disc. At any rate, if you like mid-tempo music that isn't going to distract you, this is some decent stuff to have on in the background (it works enough nice lowends to massage your eardrums rather nicely at the same time), but it doesn't do much if you're hoping for something that's going to provide multiple engaging listens.
Rating: 5.25
