Miss Piggy Lunchbox

From Ipecac’s Orthrelm bio:

Orthrelm’s first recordings avoided repetition of any kind, no choruses, no riff repeated. … With OV, Orthrelm embraces repetition…. sort of.

Sort of? I can’t think of a single better word to summarize this album than “repetition.” This is prog rock meets minimalism, where a short, rapid-fire guitar riff about one second long is repeated dozens upon dozens of times, achieving such a hypnotic effect that when the riff finally changes, which happens about once every 2.5 minutes early on in the single, 45-minute track on this CD and a few times per minute later in the track, it has a dramatic effect in stark contrast to the slight variation of the actual change.

Charles-Louis Hanon is the nemesis of every young piano student, as his technical exercises of repeated ascending and descending patterns are drilled into all of them. Just say the name Hanon around a pianist and you will almost certainly get a visible shiver, as memories of plagues of incessant aural and kinesthetic patterns instilled by exacting teachers are conjured up. This is like Hanon, minus the ascending and descending. It’s just repetition.

Of course, like minimalism, interesting perceptual effects are achieved with this level of rapid repetition, and the listener is left wondering if the phasing in the drums or the changes in accent in the guitar riff are really there or if their mind is just playing tricks on them. It’s very cool in an intellectual, artsy sort of way, but without the proper mood-setting chemicals, it’s not really an enjoyable casual listen.

You can listen to a sample of it on Ipecac’s site here. The intro is different from the rest of the track, and takes up about a third of the sample, so if you make it to the big change a third of the way through, you basically know what the remaining 44 minutes sound like.

Rating:

Mixers: none
Keepers: none
Filed Between: Orff (Carmina Burana, St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, cond. Leonard Slatkin) and Beth Orton (Trailer Park)

Tags: 1.5 lunchboxes, 2005, CD reviews, Ipecac, music

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