Release Date: 6 June 2023
Song Count: 14
Duration: 50 minutes, 52 seconds
Rating: 3.7/10
Description:
(Note: Thanks for the recommendation! And apologies for the low rating.)
While my musical discoveries throughout this albumthon project have been nothing short of experimental, off-the-wall and at times even highly unapproachable to the average music listener, no band has been more of a pure embodiment of those traits than the subjects we're looking at today - international electronic music band six impala with their third full-length album, EARWAX. One thing is clear from the get-go: the five-man group most certainly have a knack for eccentrics and mind-shattering weirdness, to the point where their songs are frequently described more as outright "sound collages" than anything, and especially this full-length project is no exception to that rule.
Putting a set of labels to the absolute brute force of chaos that is this band's music is, to put it in simple terms, impossible, as not even basic grooves or patterns are safe from being broken into millions of cutting shards under their production. Both the amount of sounds used in conjunction to one another as well as the choice in sounds ranging from hints of more expected sounds to extreme distortions, sound effects commonly in no right to be featured in serious musical works, and equally disorganised and chaotic vocals and voice acting leads to a collection of song that sound outright otherworldly and physically incomprehensible to the human brain. Or perhaps this is how aliens would perceive human music and we may just be seeing a glimpse of our own works? It is certainly an interesting thought.
While the extremely bold approach to music-making is definitely one to respect, and this sort of "absolutely no limits" kind of music most certainly has its receptive audience that has been firmly dedicated to not only EARWAX, but the entire discography of six impala as a group, for me personally, there was simply a sort of factor that was missing from the record which ended up making it really not click for me and put me off severely. In spite of being a general fan of extreme electronic music, the lack of an outright baseline set within the music to be expanded on and the almost excessive unpredictability of it all simply proved to be not the kind of style I look for. The record certainly wasn't an all outright negative experience overall, but I found very little to actually mentally attach to and subsequently enjoy - but perhaps over time I may grow into this sort of music more in the future, so who knows.