Monday, January 12, 2009

V/A - (Triskaidekaphobia) 13,000.00 Milliseconds


Animal Machine / Yellow Crystal Star - Ball Gagged And Used / IxChelAscent








Insects With Tits / Wenapta - Untitled / Mama Toxic Apocalypse








Fruss / I Can't Read - Missing Teeth / Ofu








Richard Devine / Suck My Beatles / The New Jedi Order - 13 / I Am A Walrus / MV17669copy.aif








Reviewing this record is like reviewing the radio. Yeah, the whole thing, not just one station. It just doesn't make any sense. Every song (aka station) has it's own sound. Some are blasting grindcore, or glitchy electronics, some are just bits of dialogue or speeches, and some are sheer noise. The only running theme is everything is 13 seconds, hence the phobia. Each of the 99 tracks has 2 or 3 songs, each from a different band, totaling over 200 bands. I assume it makes it easier to navigate. Or maybe there's a 99 track limit on CDs. I have no idea. Whatever the reason, I'm sure it's a good one.

Nothing ever really develops into a traditional song but there are pieces on here that definitely stand on their own. Just because everything is wicked short and gets lumped together into a massive bizarre sound collage doesn't mean the individual parts aren't special. In fact, just the opposite. There are some real winners on here.

Songs by big(ish) names like Matmos, Venetian Snares, Cock E.S.P., Two Dead Sluts One Good Fuck, AIDS Wolf, Otto Von Schirach, Wildildlife, White Mice, Eats Tapes, and they're all really solid but the fun part is discovering all of these brilliant bands with the craziest fucking names. Cum Sock, James Brown Hands, Testicular Manslaughter, Insects With Tits, Batman Vs Predator, Alienslang, Super Pizza Party, and my personal favorite, Fag Muscle (click here for a full tracklisting as a JPG). It's hard to get an idea of what these bands sound like, especially since there's no reason to assume these little snippets represent the "true" sound of the band, but I'm sure they're all as awesome as they seem.

I like to think to myself that I'll listen to 13,000 Milliseconds a lot. You know, for those times when I'm either completely ambivalent to what I listen to or when I'm so torn between different genres/moods/whatever that I can't make a decision. This will be perfect for those times. Except I get the feeling that maybe I'll never listen to Triskaidekaphobia because it's so fucking brutal and chaotic that I'll have to be in a very specific mood to enjoy it. Either way, it's a ferocious adventure that's cool as shit and I know it's here when I need it.

By the way, if you get this CD and you pop it into your computer, the internet won't magically get all of the information. Because of the anal archivist in me, I had to manually (and painstakingly) input the artist and song title info by the hundreds but once I did it, I wasn't able to "Submit CD Track Names" so... if you have any ideas how I can do that, lemme know and I can lend a helping hand so no one else has to go through what I went through.

No comments: