Delusions of Adequacy
January 2001
Matt Fink

File Under:
Ambient mood music, sound collage
RIYL:
The music in movies that doesn't appear on soundtracks, listening to traffic and road constru ction, the sounds you hear every day but usually don't have to pay for Every once and awhile I like to invite the guys over for some poker, mainly because it provides me the opportunity to subject them to music I'm sure they will hate. So, I feed them a steady stream of Cab Calloway jazz, the Texas swing of Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys, Captain Beefheart's multi-pronged insanity, and the crazed hillbilly stringband music of J.E. Mainer and his Mountaineers. And then I stand back and collect their criticisms. Heck, these guys can't even stand listening to Tom Waits because "he's too weird and he can't sing." With Mount Analog, I think I've found the next eyebrow raiser.

You see, Mount Analog (a.k.a. Tucker Martine) doesn't really play music in the traditional sense. Oh, there are instruments, many more listed than I can identify, but the sounds they produce eschew most conventional notions of Western songwriting. In short, I'm pretty sure you won't wake up humming anything here.

That's not to say that the sounds included here aren't musical and altogether interesting, but explaining them is no easy task. Opening up with the spooky "The Price of Oranges" you hear the kind of music generally played as someone walks down creaky steps into a dark basement in a horror movie. In fact, many of these tracks have a very surreal cinematic feel. Sometimes, as with the enveloping piano and violin of "Lights Up the River", that sound is pleasantly soothing. Usually, however the sounds are rather complex and confusing, as tracks like "Ma" go from what appear to be someone playing Space Invaders while an airplane flies overhead to someone sloshing through a marsh with heavy feet. At any rate, an illustrated book of accompanying pictures would help the effect.

The kitchen-sink clattering of "Not Trying Flying" even incorporates a little bit of a bass line, making it the bonafide toe-tapper of the disc and the mostly likely candidate to be the first single for Top 40 radio (if Top 40 radio existed solely in a David Lynch film). Similarly, "All Misty Eyed" has a fairly predictable Middle Eastern sound via electric guitar, mandolin and drums that actually climax with some nice guitar soloing.

Of course, "Foothill", which sounds like a person practicing a pedal steel beside a malfunctioning washing machine, and "Crazymaker", which recalls somebody eating an apple while obsessively washing it off in a tub of water after every bite, are ultimately more interesting. Strangely, you find yourself tapping along, even if there is no discernable rhythm.

Overall, if you're the type of person who needs to hear a refrigerator humming to get to sleep at night, this may be your album. Alternately, if you've ever said that you miss "the sounds of the city," this disc just may be a revelation to you. Finally, if your favorite part of the Olivia Tremor Control's Dusk At Cubist's Castle were those portions of "Green Typewriters" that contained no actual songs, by all means seek out this release.

I doubt Mount Analog will get many spins in my CD player, but at least now I can put off buying Lou Reed's epic two-disc study in guitar feedback, Metal Machine Music, to get a reaction. In reality, I can't wait to see the looks on the faces around the poker table. I may just put Mount Analog on repeat loop.