#synth punk

Futurisk (USA 1979-84)

Album #48 found on the Internet Archive:

Release date: 2019

Language: English

Genre(s): Synth Punk/Noise Pop

Cabaret Voltaire, 1980

The final bosses dying breath. A rusted amalgamation of animatronic parts, theme park rides, blurry crts, broken speakers, and electronic toys. Falling apart as it grabs at you with it's final breath. It mocks you with sampled laughs and humiliating recordings of yourself, distorted to the point of being unrecognizable. It screeches and cracks, move so unpredictably. Pixels upon pixel flickering into horrid creations. 

I honestly don’t care much for this album. It’s super unique in a lot of ways and individuals parts of it are great, but in combination i find it to be a bit of mess. First off its too quiet for it own good, its sounds like throughout, that it sitting in front of me at somewhat of distance, while i think a album like this should drown you in its noises. I feel its such a silly complaint but it my review so I'm going to mention it. A lot of moments throughout would work so much better in my opinion if it stabbed into my ears rather then just yelling for my attention.

I described it as this monster and it definitely can be when all its pieces form cohesively, but its most often can be represented by little skittering creatures, once you seen a couple they lose any fear factor they've had and you get used to them. And that comparison goes farther then just intensity but also in general cohesiveness, a lot of the elements of each songs don’t really build up to anything. They have no chemistry and there just isn’t anything happening between them. Pixely synths here, thumping drum over there, honestly really annoying vocals over it all, and that it, that's most the songs, and it just doesn't work for me. it not low effort it just doesn’t grab me in the way the other Nero’s Day at Disneyland projects do. When the instrumentals are able to build into something i do find them to be enjoyable but that's a rare occasion.

In between songs there's definitely whiplash, they often start abruptly so they don't build into each other at all. Most of the time that shouldn't be necessary but i feel i could've really help this album if it flowed better between tracks.

Finally, I'm really sorry but the vocals SUCK (imo). i don't know how to properly explain my reasoning, but the way they are sung and added in just sound really annoying and ends giving the album this crappy Hazbin Hotel/ cringe 2010s steampunk aesthetic (Idk, I've never really liked steampunk but i feel that it was a particularly awful time for the aesthetic) sound that i just don't vibe with. The vocals kind of sound tinny, like there coming from old timey speakers, kind of reminiscence of alastor's vocal effect and all other 20's and 30's inspired media and characters.

I think the worst thing an album can do is leave pretty much no impression, neither a “That was terrible” or a “HOLY SHIT’ but just a “That was fine”. But Sadly that just how i feel about this album, it's just fine. That’s all, for something as experimental as this I'm happy it was able to be enjoyable on occasion and being able to the see improvement of Lauren's music in future releases is awesome. However the album itself, Meh.

Best Track: Glass ceiling cabaret (the vocal are actually really well done on this one)

Worst Track: Moonage Daydream (idk thought it was kind-of boring)

Digital Leather — Shattered Reflections

From The True Story Of Your Death, the rare 2004 CD-R album by Digital Leather.

Salvaged from an old CD-R ripped to low quality MP3s and stored on a broken hard drive in 2004.

This is early Digital Leather: raw, haunted, damaged synth-punk / lo-fi electronic bedroom pop from Shawn Foree’s shadow world.