#2225 Modulogeek - Modulogeek

That chunky 8-bit cover might lead you to expect 8-bit bleep-and-buzz -- and there's some of that, and so much more. Variety's the key to this album's magic. In isolation some of its tricks wouldn't work: The Circus Mcgurkus's kid-talking would be too twee, For the Bleeps' Starcraft tutorial samples would be too gimmicky, A Post-Rock Intro's meanderings would be too boring. And even taken as a whole, it'd be a scattershot: those circuit bent squonks, those Books-ian slices of life, those chopped little drum samples.

But they all set eachother up beautifully - it's an album that demands to be listened to straight through. There's a thread that runs, of humanity and vulnerability and happiness and craft. It's the little details, the imprecisions, the seams: the sound of the physical button presses on the toy instrument, the off-center clamoring of vocals, you sense the joy of making music, of trying everything.

It never quite hits the piercing highs of, say, ^ The Books, but it rivals fellow Monome-enthusiast Daedalus's efforts to weave the artificial into the human, to find something familiar and new in the intersection 4.5/5