Album: Amerika
Author: Michael Lutomski
Publication: Foxy Digitalis (source)
Date: 02/03/2011

A difficult album, but sometimes rewarding, Amerika rollercoasters throughout.

Somehow it shares its essence with both breakcore and minimalism simultaneously. A man and his piano: that's all. But a man and his piano which sound like a thousand melodies starting and then stopping almost instantly (sometimes quite instantly), only to pick up in the middle of another melody, perhaps the one that started fifteen melodies ago. So the attention span of breakcore presides but certainly not the pace. The sudden and often prolonged dead silence often made me wonder if I had been holding my breath.

I am sure there are a lot of intellectual things going on here that are flying over my admittedly expressionistic head. These are re-imaginings of established songs, and a statement is being made. Still, I do find the level of control here to be quite remarkable. Notes blare out and then are choked off in a flash.

This goes on for well over an hour though. By the end, it feels more like a test of endurance than a musical experience. If you are in the mood for some super-disjointed, heady piano covers (because we all are at some point), then your year is about to be made. I, however, gravitate towards more hedonistic versions of the abstract.

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