With that album art and the abundance of “brain” and “melt” references in the song titles, it struck me that this album from w.ravenveer is sort of a doctoral thesis in noise form regarding how the constant exposure to media impacts our brains. Maybe he’s trying to demonstrate what the noise actually does to our brains, or maybe it’s about the machines themselves breaking down; maybe both. All I know is that, at times, listening to the over the three and a half hours of music here, I feared my own brain was melting down. Which I guess is my way odd way of saying this is a highly recommended album.
There are eleven long-form pieces on “brain melting screens” with none coming in under the ten-minute mark. Many of the sound elements within each song are somewhat repetitive, but there’s so much going on with the production that it never gets boring. It’s mostly electronic music, save what may be an actual sax or drum kit here and there. There is lots of waxing and waning of intertwined sounds as each track unfolds.
A few highlights for me:
- The malfunctioning satellite sounds of opening track “short wave brain.” There are occasional washes of a solar storm along with lots of pulsing and shrieking electronics. Maybe in space they can hear you scream?
- “ET meltdown” features a sampled discussion excerpt from some sort of talk show where they are discussing UFO conspiracies (which I always think of as followed by the phrase “that THEY don’t want you to know”). The sickly electronic elements are the perfect embellishment for the conspiracy brains on display.
- “bell and xeno melting away” starts out very quiet, then disjointed xmas bells or glockenspiel appear. It’s a relatively clean sound up front, but there are more distorted sounds and echoes behind it. At about eight minutes in, the ringing switches to more of a xylophone sound, until the whole thing spins out a little at the end.
- Percussion features heavily on two later tracks. “indian melting buffet” has the feel of subtle electronic versions of traditional Indian percussion instruments, mixed with more aggressive cymbals and noises. Meanwhile “percussione fusion” feel like a full-on drum kit exploration, with more of the minor background production elements we’ve gotten used to at this point in the proceedings.
Fear not…I’m happy to report no brains were actually melted by listening all the way through. The whole album is quite an impressive sonic journey you should consider taking.