Customer Reviews

Popular Music for Unpopular People

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"Popular Music For Unpopular People" is a surreal collection of "songs" (for lack of a better word) that is definitely not for the mainstream. I enjoyed the more experimental pieces, although a few of the brief compositions were more akin to conventional European speed metal, the best example of which is "Anne R. Kaye," which literally begs for the fast forward button.

The CD has many rewarding experiences. I loved the amusing percussion-intensive "The Last Drop" which takes a coffee commercial for its obvious inspiration. I liked the unique variety of instruments and odd counterpoints in "Unwanted Inches," while my very favorite had to be the spoken voice German lesson gone horribly awry "In the Multi-Purpose Room." I was also fond of the unusual combination of musical and non-musical elements in "Pope's Nose," and the Asian-influenced "Soft Robotics."

The CD grew on me the more I listened to it. I fondly think of it as an unnatural blend of John Cage and Frank Zappa. This CD is definitely only for more adventurous fans of experimental music, and while it is far from perfect, it is sporadically enjoyable and always interesting.

File under "curiosities." The kinds that indulge both the musicians' and the listeners' fetishes (not just "file this novelty record in the cut-out bin"; "curiosity" is in the plural here, making EWBT worthy of your attention). "What would happen if we set Iron Maiden melodies to Zappaesque `Peaches en Regalia' instrumentation, like `Powerslave' intervals played on the xylophone?" (This is something like the concept of their song "The Last Drop.") "What would happen if we made instrumentals with the manic drive and technical excess of Buckethead while stripping away any and all guitar soloing?" (True to their "grind" roots, Dave Witte and Chris Dodge do that on half of the songs here--they notably start the album on this note with "Kind of Black and Blue.") "How can we make the human voice sound like a didgeridoo using studio trickery?" You will be able to find out how EWBT attempt to answer questions like these if you pick up Popular Music for Unpopular People. The people who have these kinds of curiosities are indeed so unpopular that you will be extremely fortunate to even hear this kind of music on college radio (what these guys are closest to are any of the side projects Mike Patton has had outside of Faith No More--none of which are exactly jamming the Hot 100, so shell out the cash). It takes a while for these exercises in strangeness to really engage a listener, but from track 17 on, where we hear a German lesson gone surreal, it gets almost as good as experimental rock gets these days.