Art Giraffefungal - Black Porridge Kaleidoscope [Pointy Bird Records - 2010]'Black Porridge Kaleidoscope’ offers up a selection of thick, juddering, slightly noise bound and darkly crude beat-less synth scapes that at first start out vaguely atmospheric and marginally intriguing, but soon becomes more than a little repetitive, bland and samey when spread out over a full albums length. The albums made up of sixteen tracks in all that all hit around the just over the two minute mark to nearly the three minute mark a picec. And each track consists of a series of wavering, juddering and at times very badly played synthesizer textures that’s sometimes are fed through effects peddles for slight more noise or lo-grade dark psychedelic texturing. Mostly the tracks seem to judder, move and fall along in quite a random and unstructured manner with ever so often more harmonic or atmospheric elements appearing; but these are quickly replaced with for more lo- grade and amateurish button pressing, ham-fisted experimentation and general uninspired synth dwell. The press release openly admits the strangle named Art Giraffefungal has "limited computer and synthesizer skills” I think this is more than a little bit of an under statement as most of this album sounds like it’s been made by a bored teenage who’s touched a keyboard maybe once or twice in his life and has being let lose in a studio for an afternoon with a synthesizer, a computer and some peddles. Later on in the albums life there are attempts to slow down and stretch out the tracks pace but it still comes across as bland, amateurish and ultimate very dull Really a very low grade synthesizer and computer compositions album that’s flawed in concept, execution and has little or no talent attached to it. This kind of thing gives other synth and computer based composer a bad name and shows clearly when technology is doing all the work with an uninspired direction and lack of ideas. Roger Batty
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