by: Zero Sharp
Up until this point, the only exposure I had to Pimmon was through his appearance on Fatcat Records' Split series with his side of beatless tracks that managed to be slightly noisy and warm at the same time. Needless to say, when I picked up "snaps*crackles*pops," I was surprised by the fact that he was putting out on Tigerbeat6, a label more known for IDM than anything else.Rather than draw any conclusions about the Tigerbeat6 using dartboards or the like to select their musicians, I listened to it. This album manages to be both. It's an interesting and damn fun direction to take IDM, and it manages to be warm and somewhat noisy. Pimmon's approach to many of these songs with beats is to take some twisted beat loop produced by massively sonically warping some source into a fun, goofy, but workable beat, and then let it be overrun by a stampede of odd effects until it discentigrates into the end of the song. Sound good? It works well.
"no jazz for jokers" is a great demonstration of the technique; something sounding like a combination of steel drums and marimbas happily start, forming the base of the track, until partway through where something sounding like a group of very pitch-shifted, muted saxaphones or Arabic horns ring in and out of the music with an off-key melody snippet until they win the entire track at minute four. "frosty pink" is similar, with its probably originally trip-hop bassline, spaced apart making the whole thing bouncy, is invaded by a sound which seems to be the cross between horns and tapes rewinding too fast which blurts out a cute, spastic melody. The disc does have more serious tracks, also, which gives a nice break to the cute and fluffy. "rtw: sound of a finished kiss" borders almost on dark, as various machine sounds flow onward, slowly evolving, until they finally erupt, giving way to a deconstructed rock song, complete with chopped up gituar leading background bells. The result of the whole track is warm and beautiful, and an interesting change of pace. "the King, the Eye, and the Surfboard" sees Pimmon return to his formula, only this time, stampeding a jazz riff with highly manipulated voices, leaving a rather haunting aftertaste. "the sacred dance of Mimi Lush" ends back on a high, bouncy note with a warm melody loop constructed from something sampled backwards competing with odd bleeps for attention.
All in all, this album is brilliant, and it's what I want when I go looking for IDM; odd sounds comprising the tracks, interesting rhythms throughout, odd effects, and dancability. This album has that all, and more, to boot. I would highly reccomend this to anyone looking for a good time.
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