Monday, September 22, 2008

Mini Review: Treemouth - Electro Convulsive Theory



Artist: Treemouth
Album: Electro Convulsive Theory
Year: 2008
Rating: 2/5

(Written in June 12, 2008)

The guys from Tiptoe Autoprod. (the label) have a quite vague definition of 'trip-hop'. Anyway, "Electro Convulsive Theory" is described not as pure trip-hop but as some sort of a trip rock hybrid. Anyway, that doesn't change the fact that the band has only few remote connections with trip-hop. The first track is the only reason why this album doesn't have 0.5 or 1.0. A real breath of fresh air for trip-hop music, "Mechanical" makes you think that the rest of the album will be as genius, if not even more. Unfortunately, the band have messed up the ideas, with the rest of the album mainly using guitar rushes in the style of the ones from "Mechanical" - in which they were the loudest and lowest points of the song. Rarely Treemouth manage to conceive something a bit farther from catastrophe, of course, right before diving into another guitar shower - supposedly "oniric". I guess they've listened to some albums from the 'shoegazer' movement, but not only do they miss the point of 'shoegazer' (atmosphere, which ECT (as abbreviated by Treemouth themselves) lacks), but they also mix those influences with a lot worser influences, probably from some commercial punk or emo bands. So what we've got here? Terrible male vocals (like someone who pretends to be punk but fails to be so) plus relatively shallow guitar showers equals something that would have been much, much better if they were paying more attention to the beginning of "Mechanical" - the only pearl on this awful release.

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