Someone get the word out to the bedroom musicians of the world: a loop does not make a song. In what might be mistaken as an art of artful minimalism, each track on this album starts with a loop that remains unchanged for a couple of minutes, a second part fades in, a knob gets twiddled, the original loop drops out, and then the song's over. A loop, a tweak, an outro, repeat. A loop, a tweak, an outro repeat. There's not enough here to keep your attention, and even the loops are slurred and sludgy produced, the parts bearing all the artifacts of being clumsily stretched to match one another. That the beats sway by island breezes might be pleasant enough if the laconic invocations weren't so thoroughly at odds with the album's titchy feel.
It's worth noting that Ted Feighan triggers all this by hand, eschewing automated sequencing. And maybe, live, that makes the Monster Rally show all that much more of an experience. But on the record it doesn't buy him any particular immediacy or organic charm: it just sounds sloppy, unfocused, and un-fun, a hasty slapping-to-disc by someone who's found a way to make sounds but hasn't figured out how to make an album 1.5/5
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