SOILED – Mindnumb (Elm Lodge Records)
Posted: January 25th, 2005, by Stuart FowkesA series of ideas. Little ones. Maybe one per track. Some very good. Tracks don’t get going. Often enough. A series of electronic palettes of sound here from Soiled, which as you may have gathered, are mostly on the brief side. Whether this is a good or a bad thing depends on which side of the not-outstaying-your-welcome vs. not-developing-your-ideas-properly line you stand on. Me? Ambivalent as ever.
Opening track ‘Mindnumb’ revolves around one scuzzy drum break, filtered up and down, back and forth, distorted, clean, and Req-like in its simplistic, lo-fi delivery. It’s a fine introduction to something more developed, but not a lot more, and sadly the next couple of tracks don’t move things to the next level either. ‘Bingo Beauty’ and ‘Bad Vowel Movement at WP Primary’ are both promising, the latter coming across like the drop in a Pest tune, while the former reminds me of the introduction to something by Movietone. ‘Paranoid Conclusions No. 7’ succeeds because it gives itself a bit of space to find its own character – a pleasingly-hyperactive mashup of I Care Because You Do arpeggios, and easily the most satisfying piece here. The EP works well as a sampler showing off the way Soiled go about producing music, but it’d be great to hear them tackle some ideas at greater length.
Stuart Fowkes
Stuart is possibly one of the tallest people you have ever seen. He towers above your puny skyscrapers like Rodan on steroids, his blonde spikes puncturing the atmosphe re like crazed, gelled knives. In real life he is part of the Sunnyvale Noise Sub-element pop outfit, and writes for other websites as well as this one - the cheeky blighter. He favours the noisier end of the musical spectrum, with a fervour which would seem to indicate a dodgy heavy metal past.
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