Cyclic Defrost Magazine

Concrete Cookie Cutter & The Maggot Farmer - Mondegreen (Force Of Nature Records)

Posted: 26 Mar 2009 06:01 AM PDT

I really try to listen to albums like this one without getting the whole ’soundtrack to a movie that hasn’t been made’ thing into my head, because it’s such a cliched (and often unproductive) manner in which to deal with soundscapes which deserve to be listened to on their own terms. But try as I might, I couldn’t completely overcome it with this album. That’s not at all a criticism of the album, though. I’ve settled into the idea that Mondegreen conjures up an extremely strong narrative in my mind as I listen to it. It doesn’t necessarily make me think of pictures, but I do find myself constructing ideas in the form of a story as the work progresses. So let me tell you about that story. It may or may not be anywhere near what the artists intend, but it’s too vivid in my mind to be able to go about this any other way.

A series of drone based pieces move through a variety of moods. There is a sense of foreboding and darkness, though it remains very musical (in a minimal sense) and listenable throughout. Punctuating the fog of atmosphere are field recordings which break through regularly and this is where the narrative unfolds. Early tracks such as ‘Tropic Of Cancer’ have a faint sense of factory production - a low white noise interspersed with heavily reverberating, though distant, clangs and bangs. The sounds of retro-futuristic transportation fly across the stereo spectrum and I find myself in some Bladerunner dystopia. In ‘Book Of Margins’ backwards cymbals and industrial clatter background a distorted, minor-key bass melody, a sense of conflict affected. In ‘Painleve’, vaguely naturistic sounds submerge under a helicopter passby and the distant sound of a million voices and sirens. Always though, inspite of the obvious human presence, is a larger foreboding of these drones - the earth groaning, to use a biblical metaphor - which continue to rise up in battle against the wail and mess of humanity and its tools. By ‘Polonium Symphony’, the groaning of the combatants seems to merge into one mesh of interplay, before ‘The Reckless Sleeper’ sees a few final flings of technology ultimately subsumed into the uneasy peace of bird song and cricket chirp. It’s never quite resolved, but the story in my head finishes with nature coming out triumphant, if irrevocably damaged, in the end.

So that’s my story. I guess I’m trying to say that the album is richly evocative and highly listenable, while allowing the possibility for all manner of texts and subtexts to attach themselves. I have no idea if I even come close to the specifics of what the artists had in mind, but I’m certain they would be happy that they so clearly inspire the mind of their listener.

Adrian Elmer