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I'll never understand non-Japanese people's propensity for appropriating the Japanese language to add "flair." Ladies and gentlemen, can we please just stop this? It hasn't been "cool" in decades and only adds needless confusion.
Anyways, I saw this one this being recommended (though not directly to me) on the cut up thread and I was impressed by the sexy-ass packaging; Pressortape's presentation in general is quite nice so kudos to them for putting in the effort.
However, a quality presentation doesn't necessarily equate to a quality experience, and in this instance I'm of the opinion that clearly one man’s "GOAT" is another man’s BLEH.
On this tape, NBDY apes Facialmess’ style (and to a broader extent, modern cutup styles in general) to such an exaggerated degree it almost comes across as parody; long stretches of silence are arbitrarily punctuated by uninspired blasts of noise and equally uninspired field recording interludes.
This whole trend of prolonged "earthy" and/or "emotional" passages now apparently becoming a prerequisite in cutup noise really irritates me: who the hell decided on this as the standard to follow?
I’m not saying the sound of bird calls or breaking leaves apart can’t be presented in novel and intriguing ways—Jeph Jerman comes to mind (granted, he's far from my favorite)—but here it feels like placeholder audio accidentally left over in the final master.
While not terrible, I can’t help but think Amplified Silence would’ve been better had it literally consisted of amplified silence: I'm sure the concept's been done before but at least it's a compelling concept. Ironically, the silence that is here isn’t amplified at all.
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