Doormouse
The Method/Freaked-Out Mess
(Violent Turd Records)
The last time I heard from Doormouse was quite awhile ago. He put together the brutally pumping Noisecore: Volume 1 on X Sight Records (a wet dream for gabber heads) and in the meantime released work on Planet Mu and other labels. The Method/Freaked-Out Mess is his first offering on the Violent Turd label, and what a debut it is. Instead of just offering up one disc and calling it good, this is truly a 2CD affair, packed to the gills with brutal beat workouts and a twisted sense of humor. 2 discs (one mixed, one original) and just about 2 hours of music.
Interestingly enough, the first disc of the release (and the one that takes front cover art) is the mixed disc (but it could be due to Doormouse really making his name as a DJ) The Method. Consistent with other short-attention span releases that have come out lately, it packs 40 tracks into just under 60 minutes of time and slams just about every combination under the sun together. It opens with Count Basie and movies into work by everyone from the Neptunes to Thelonius Monk to The Monkees. Oh yeah, and just in case you were wondering whether he had gone jazzbo and hip-hop, there's a healthy dose of beat splattering from the likes of Venetian Snares, Squarepusher, Panacea, Speedfreak, AFX, and others.
Typical to Doormouse style, the whole thing is underpinned with a wide variety of breakcore and hopped-up freaked-out beatwork. Just to make things even more interesting, he layers in dialogue from both Apocolypse Now and an old Disney sounds of horror record while slamming back and forth from Ministry to Tom Waits to Evolution Control Commitee. Needless to say, it's a sprawling mess, but a whole load of fun as well. It's easy enough to see why it was the frontace piece of the package.
Freaked-Out Mess is a little more hit-and-miss in terms of quality of music, but it's easy to hear that Doormouse keeps his eclecticism going in his original music as well as his mixes. Things aren't quite as drastic as flipping from old school jazz to gabber meltdowns, but the twisted sense of humor and unique sound samples find their place in the mix. "Crustomer (Moving To Miami)" opens the disc with a pitch-warbled horn sample and all kinds of garbled dialogue (as well as Tom Jones yelps and howls) over a low-end bombing beat. "Face In The Gutter" is a little more direct, pounding a redlining 4/4 beat relentlessly for just over 2 minutes while squiggled melodies fry off the face of the hardware and vocal samples add only some semblence of control.
"Back Door Blues" brings more horns and a touch of jazz influence into the spastic beats (alongside some cartoon sound effects) while "Anyone Who Name's A Track 'Anyone Who Name's A Track So And So Can Kiss My Such And Such Ass Can Kiss My (Adjective) (Noun) Ass' Can Kiss My (Better Adjective) (Better Noun) Ass" is basically a one-joke splattercore song build around a rather juvenile sample. Interestingly enough, he shows an amazing amount of touch on quiet tracks like the oft-silly "Hairblz," in which a pretty melody dances around subtle beat programming and dancing low-end bursts. Too often he seems content to turn the volume up to 11 and let it rip, but if you've heard his work before, you probably know what you're getting into (his cover/remix of Black Sabbath's "War Pigs" that closes the disc is thundering and great). If you listen to both discs in one sitting, your ears may be bleeding at the end, but you still might have a smile on your face.
Rating: 7
