Amplitude of Frequencies Over Time

The Building Press | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (June 25, 2002)
• Original Release Date: June 25, 2002
• Number of Discs: 1
• ASIN: B00006BAN4
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,097,430 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Jason Rivera - Columnist for Willamette Week

...produces swelling then fading melodies; the songs flow at a hypnotizing pace and then suddenly polymorph into spectacularly harsh pieces.

Product Description

NOISY-BIPOLAR-INTENSE-SOFT-DISTORTED-LOUD-DISSONANCE-MATH

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars JunkmediaReview, May 20, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Amplitude of Frequencies Over Time (Audio CD)

Remember math rock? Do you recall blowing your mind listening to Don Caballero's For Respect in '94? Or clumsily rocking out to Rodan's glorious "Darjeeling"? Well, that loving feeling has never left some folks, including present-day math rock provocateurs the Building Press.

The Seattle-based trio (guitar, bass and drums) crafts ominous instrumentals that are tense and angular but that also purvey a striking organic quality. The organic aspect is primarily manifested in guitarist A.P. Schroder's willingness to color outside the lines, as he periodically inserts precarious swaths of sliding dissonance into songs (as in "The Ceiling is Falling" and "Auto Mechanic") that play against the precision of the rest of the performances. The technique creates a gripping tension. Another organic counterpoint is the subtle neck-bending whammy effect early in the harmonics portion of "Street Crime, Street Crime," a song that also touts more of the dissonance noted above.

Speaking of tension, track two's "Microphone Game" is so fraught with it that, if you listen closely, you can hear one of the Building Press lads screaming in the background. And there is a significant amount of tense ass-kicking and name-taking in "Spanish Love Song," an album highlight that climaxes with slicing, dry guitar blasts circling over a rumbling bass line. The Building Press' seething control is riveting.

Few will dispute the notion that dynamics are the determining factor for success in math rock. While the Building Press seems to shy away from succumbing to the red-lining distortion and chaos exhibited on, say, Mogwai's cataclysmic My Father the King, the band can plumb quiet depths and explode to frenzied crescendos with the best of them. Fortunately, Amplitude of Frequencies Over Time's pleasantly dry and glossless production throws the band's mechanistic mayhem into high relief, thus amplifying the songs' intensity in lieu of sonic trips to 11.

Despite the lack of vocals, the band gets its sense of humor across. The album's liner notes point out that the graphic on the front cover is a visual representation of "Street Crime, Street Crime," a map of the song's amplitude of frequencies over time (Like the album title, get it?). If that isn't self-deprecating mathlete-ism, then I don't know what is. Also the sampled voice at the end of "Street Crime, Street Crime" that repeats the phrase "There is nothing like the same things over and over again," which is a potshot at and affirmation of math rock's bread and butter, tension harvested from repetition.

The act only offers vocals on one track, "Analyze Our Time," and, frankly, the sparse vocals don't really add to the album. Why mess with the classic math rock formula? The Building Press is making its mark through energetic performances and an exciting willingness to creatively clutter its melodies. As such, if math rock is your thing, the band, like its noted precursors, will reward your attention.