Add N To X
On The Wires Of Our Nerves
(Satellite)
As electronic music progresses and genres get watered down, there's always going to be groups that completely try to bust out of the mold. Add N To X is one of those groups. The trio takes ancient instruments like Moogs and old keyboards and filter clunky and weird sounds through them to produce electronic landscapes that alternate from jarring to soothing and everything in between.
The group actually owes a lot to Kraftwerk in their approach. With minimal vocodered vocals on a couple tracks and a completely machine sound and attitude to everything, they might as well be singing, "We are the robots." The album probably isn't recommended for those just getting into electronic music, as it is kind of a challenging listen. The album title is really fitting, due to the jarring nature of a lot of the tones and sounds used on the album. On a majority of the songs, there is a buzzing or grating that's really hard to get past. The tones sometimes go into strange ranges that sound more like a testing pattern than music. Even with that, though, the group has managed to put together a fairly interesting group of songs. It works better when they work more layers into the mix like in songs such as, "Nevermind" and the live drumming on, "Sir Ape." Thrown in a kick-ass cover and it's a kind of experimental album worth listening to.
Rating: 6
