Grandmaster Gareth – Magical Sound Shower (GM
Sounds)
LP/CD/DL
24 June 2013
Grandmaster Gareth was once described by John
Peel as ‘the new God’ and, if Peel’s statement is true, then this is certainly
the album for the pop atheist. There’s a
hint of Grandmaster Flash and White Lines to I Am Garzuvius, indeed there so
many sounds on this album it’s easy to see why it was seven years in the
making. Gareth, (or should we call him
The Grandmaster?), takes influence from pulp sci-fi books and B-movies, amongst
other things, and the result is an incredible trip through a musical
Technicolor landscape.
An apple crunches, birds sing, children cry.
This album is fun, fun, fun, but, well
constructed intelligent pop too. It
doesn’t drag on forever and ever, it gives short, sharp, sound bursts which is
sometimes enough to keep a listener enthralled, and, that’s certainly what
Magical Sound Shower does. It’s
well-timed and well executed. It’s
brilliantly done and borders on genius.
There are different moods and different
textures. The Hoarder Of Moments is low
key and subtle, and is followed by ten seconds of madness in the shape of
Magical Cuts which is basically instruments made to sound out of tune. There’s a childrens TV programme in a Blue
Peter vain which provides sound bytes of what sounds like jelly making on Don’t
Grumble Under Pressure sounding almost pornographic with the innuendo voiceover
‘wobbles’. A Stephen Hawking styled
voice says the words of the album title to close the track.
There are space age doom sound effects
throughout with musical imagery of space-age comics. Possible clips from Sega and Nintendo arcade
games of the 80s bind together the Mario influenced The Bigger The Bass
Line/The Bigger The Waistline over a crunching drum beat.
A dog barks and Stephen Hawking returns to tell
us not to buy this album.
Track after track of weird and wonderful
sounds, and, beautifully put together bits of music bouncing, crashing and
making you think. Absolutely
glorious. This is probably where all
those great BBC Sound Effects albums were heading, the ones that as a teenager
I played in their entirely like a conventional album. Yeah, call me a weirdo for adding excerpts of
them into my taped Top 40 compilations!
A machete being brandished.
Great percussion on the brash, in your face,
The Nobelisk, which has distortion galore and certainly isn’t as poppy as its
predecessors. There’s even a viola
chucked in somewhere and some great post dub effects which rival last years
album from label mate D.E.A.D. Slowly
whirring and trickling along is Watch Your Step complete with childrens voice
and a Sesame Street parody. If there’s a
downfall to the album, it’s that you really need to listen to it as a whole
rather than individual tracks, it’s a project if you will, an epic extravaganza
that deserves to be appreciated in its entirety.
Cue voices of the Minions from the Despicable
Me movie?
Freestyle jazz with frenetic percussion on I
Eat Dogs, Why Not People? and CBeebies from grown-ups on The Dewormer. Don’t be fooled, it’s not a twee album, it’s
done in an incredibly original way.
A scream, Big Ben chimes and a merry-go-round.
Angelic Church voices and a cartoon factory
production line.
The title track tips a wink in the direction of
Red River Rock by Johnny & The Hurricanes or early OMD before an untitled
and unaccredited twentieth track (yes, count them!) merely exclaims “Did You
Wobble?”.
You really should own this album.
9.5/10
Links
Published on Louder Than War 24/06/13 - here
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