review :: Royce Icon
::
URL (offsite)
This disc is the 6th in a series of 9 conceptual ODRZ releases, the concept in question being the italian workday, specifically the workday in a factory. All discs in the series consist of samples of said factory, which are of course processed and manipulated.
All of the releases are restricted to one track that weighs in a tab bit chubby at 60 minutes. Also, each of the discs comes in an identical but nifty case of carefully strewn together metal wire set around a black paper insert with only the band name in red print. Very cool.
The audio feed here is an overall rhythmic slab of gritty industrial noise. Not harsh per se, but very gritty, like brushing your teeth with a brand new brillo pad. Accompanying the looped grit machines are various things; swirling ambient sweeps, bubbling bursts of heavily effected hiss, down tuned synth drones, and other things that will most likely cut you, or at least get you dirty.
My only problem here is this: The sounds themselves are definitely far above standard, but the excessive nature of them takes the record down a couple notches. I really like what I hear here, for the first 30 minutes or so, then I feel like I'm being overfed. The same sounds just keep going on in cycles, changing from one familiar part to the next and it gets oddly nauseating to listen to, especially through headphones.
Conclusion:
This is definitely a good disc, and worthy of multiple listens, but it could have been a great disc; if only it were half the length.
