When you listen to the first 30 seconds of the opening track of Blonde Wig's Wigging Out you know your in store for a good ol' fashion LO-FI album. The principal instrument being a warm tape hiss broken up with mechanical clicks and pops and deadening silence. Its nice to see Blonde Wig truly use the medium, not simply having it be Lo-Fi because its convenient to be that way, but because that is the way this album is meant to be heard. The crunch and hiss and distortion and noise stands beside the instrumentation and songwriting as of equal importance, and I always appreciate a good motivated stylistic decision. And this is Folk music. The music of the people. Not much is here in terms of fancy instrumentation or production that will blow your mind. But in "Wigging Out's" limitations one can actually find a wide range of emotion. Blonde Wig makes the most out of the setup. Parts of the album remind me of Chief Thunderclouds early work (covering you are my sunshine, using pitch bent vocals, as well as having abrupt and massive dynamic transitions. Other moments allude to a stripped down earnest style similar to Appleman & the Tapdeck. Its not an album to listen to on your ipod and "get pumped" to. This is the kind of album you would pop in the cassette player by a hammock and just relax to. Its Kind of refreshing.6.5
reviewed by Mohamed El-Darwish RADIATOR COLLECTIVE 2011
No comments:
Post a Comment