| CD REVIEW (This review has also been published at www.701.com) |
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| This latest installment in Randall Cousins' meltdown series, this one being meltdownBrown (not to be confused with meltdownGreen's Road to Boombladore, meltdownOrange's Last Atlantic Crossing or meltdownRed's Data Leak), will have you flashing back long before you can say "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds". This is "tripping" to the max and, despite the lack of many discernible lyrics (fill in the blanks with your own), is destined to knock Pink Floyd's tremendously popular The Wall right into the outer stratosphere. I'm not a heavy fan of electronic or even the more familiar "ambient" genre of music, but I found this one very appealing. Perhaps it's because I've lived a life surrounded by people who seemed to exist solely in "altered" states of consciousness that were fascinating to my own fairly "straight" but voyeuristic leanings towards deviant behaviour. In any case, this music brought back a flood of memories that were both scary and enticing. When you can get off on music like this without any pharmaceutical assistance, you know there's some genuine sorcery happening. Contributing to the musical compositions, either alone or in collaboration with Randall Cousins, are guitarist Mark Severn (formerly with The Network, a band that also featured drummer and solo artist Jack Pedler) on "it's all a blur", "elaine's worst nightmare" and "new bonnet", NSS on "rollercoaster", and Shelley Buffitt on the final, definitive track, "skippy is here". Also making appearances are Phil Kane, a fabulous composer and musician in his own right, Douglas Cousins and Chipmunk-12 - like NSS, an unknown entity. Sandwiched in between digital dalliances, menacing bass notes and soothing cathedralistic organ strains are rollercoaster clickety-clacks (on the appropriately titled "rollercoaster"), some pretty funky guitar licks, slamming doors and motorbike/racecar reverberations on "it's all a blur". This is followed by the sounds of a simulated Cambodian flute and gongs in "elaine's worst nightmare", a matrimonial opus that incorporates a chorus of "Here Comes the Bride", seguing into Stevie Wonder's "Very Superstitious". "canneberge" (Cranberry) is a catchy little theme that, oddly, sounds more Russian than French. "marathonical", while a great little marching dirge (with a skip to m'lou) on its own, tends to temporarily knock the listener out of the preceding reverie of mellow enchantment, but the sequences, each averaging around three minutes in length, are abbreviated enough to sustain interest in the tempo changes. "seeya in the purple room" has a shimmering, mystical qualilty to it, vaguely Oriental, and being akin to all things purple, I was instantly endeared by this track. "season opener" and "mondayafter" are hypnotic in their narcosis, so much so that I fell asleep twice at this point while riding on the GO train from Toronto to Hamilton, only to be rudely awakened by the annoying and incongruous rat-a-tat-tat beat of "new bonnet". "before the storm" puts you back into "trippy" mode, a perfect lead-in for "skippy is here", lysergically delivered by Shelley Buffitt and Randall Cousins, that will "peak� your appetite for yet another meltdown. |
| MUSIC FOR THE MILDLY DISTURBED (MELTDOWNBROWN) - RANDALL COUSINS |
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