Customer Reviews

Shocking Hobby

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The exploitation of digital textures or "squelchtronica" may be all the rage these days, but very few releases elevate this genre to new levels by casting the uniqueness of the sounds into an innovative relief. The latest from Speedy J is an exception, where steadily morphing textures that nestle pleasantly between noise and harmonic convention are underpinned by solid yet unorthodox beats. It's an unashamedly agressive album which favours hedonism above nihilism, holding equal appeal on the dancefloor and in more intimate listening spaces.

When musicologists in 15-20 years look back and start viewing techno/electronica/whatever you want to call it in a serious and academic way, this is one of the albums that they are going to call attention to. An absolutely brilliant, abrasive piece of work, Speedy J is taking the possibilities of this genre to new and exciting places. Using basic hip-hop beats, warping and distorting the surrounding sounds in an incredible fashion, while placing almost perfect touches of ambience vainly trying to push through the surface, Speedy J has created a work that challenges and rewards careful listening. Absolutely not for everyone, but for those who crave something that really pushes the limit, check this out. Great packaging too! A classic! Jochem, if you're reading this, please come and tour in America. I'd LOVE to see this stuff pulled off live!!

This album is a masterpiece. It's like a horror movie soundtrack, simply dreary from start to finish with not ONE positive moment. One reviewer on here considered that a bad thing, but whether you like the effect it has on you or not, you can't deny that it IS having an effect on you. I know no other way to describe this album, other than to say music is my life and I have never had an album push the buttons of my subconscious like this one does! A completely hidden gem!

As the mixed reviews for this recording attest, there is some music, like this, that performs personality tests more adroitly than other music. This is not music for the faint of heart. Nor is it music for a mind with pat, simple understandings of how the world works, for this music rips away veneers and propels the listener into a worldview that simply requires an understanding of how complexity and conscious understanding collide in a terrible liberating embrace. Good dance music has a wonderful role to play in some individuals' personalities, but that role (played by some other Speedy J recordings) is only distantly related to the almost horrific intensity of this probing, incisive electronic investigation of desperately intense sonic and emotional landscapes. Step in! Don't mind that heavy, viscous fluid that seems to flow over and around you; that clings to you and shimmers so irresistibly in some foreign light, making your skin and your very thoughts translucent with revelation. If your brain can't wrap itself around darkness and transform it into light, if you can't find softness in intensely harsh and unremitting aural assaults, if you can't grasp a totality that includes pleasure and pain, if you can't find enormous poignancy in a musical vision of life that performs liberation and a salvation out of radically acknowledging the difficulty and the complexity of the world, then this is not music that's likely to appeal to you, much less make the slightest bit of sense. There's a level of engagement required here to synchronize with music that by any conventional designations would be described as harsh, dissonant, abrasive, pulverizing, relentlessly aggressive, and just plain annoyingly noisy. To each their own. This recording is a transformation and an act of commitment given shape and form in sounds of terrible acknowledgement and revelatory power. There's great joy in the depths for those who won't fear the darkness.

Good artists tend to move beyond their old original roots and try new things. One thing is clear, this album was not meant to patronize the masses: it tends to be anything from abstract sounds to completely atonal soundscapes. Sadly this will seem a bit alien to the ears of some, but its a refreshing change of pace for others.
When I bought this album I expected it to be almost entirely long abrasive noise tracks, from the other descriptions.. that is not entirely true. There are long sections of ambience.. many tracks morph from one to the next giving the album a very complete feel to it.
This album is like a long flowing dreamscape.. somebody compared it to coil, someone else to a movie soundtrack. Its a bit of both. Getting to know it, its anything but depressing. Its incredibly well thought out, introspective, moody and dark at times, and at other times fast-paced and playful. A great listen.

Rotterdam's Jochaim Papp is back with his fourth offering of deep, dark and experimental soundscaping. Following on from the ideas developed on his third album "Public energy no 1", this outing offers a similar schizophrenic blend of texture and rhythm.

Picking up where he left off, the musical ideas seem more developed, and so they should, after all this man plays live sets constantly in order to arrange his material in the most appropriate way. Distilling his patterns until he is left with only the most beautiful, and at the same time, disturbing of tracks.

Here we see the lush ambient undertones that were ever so present on "Pepper" and "G-Spot", fighting for a place in the soundscape with the most disturbing and grunged up rhythm's.

His sound and musical evolution has often been compared to that of richard D James aka "Aphex twin". It is interesting that both artists released albums which took a similar direction, musically, at the same time (Public Energy for speedy and Richard D James for Aphex).

There is also a tour to support this release, which without doubt will be a spectacle in itsself. I have seen him playing live material from his last album (standing four feet behind him as he worked)and watched as the crowd were completely mesemorised by the onslaught of his sound. I definatly recomend his live shows (I almost fell backward in awe!).

This record is a must for anyone interested in pushing the boundaries of electronic music. There will be a number of nuclear dancefloor spin-offs to keep the four-four kickdrum lovers happy too.

For Halloween last year I decided to stay home and hand out candy to trick or treaters. So I decked out my house with numerous strobe lights indoors and outdoors, and put this album in a boombox outside on repeat. It looked like an evil science experiment gone wrong. I must have scared the S#!T out of these kids cause they would walk up my drive way but freak out when I lurked out with my friends to give them candy. I guess this album works better than those retarded sound effect tapes you get at Spencers! Ha ha. All else aside... this album is pretty f---ing cool. Love listening to it when I'm feeling introspective or broody. If your into Aphex Twin, Squarepusher, or Autechre you'll love this album. I do. Get it.

Jochem has brutally twisted all his sonic textures again, and the result is one of the most interesting releases lately. Industrial-influenced techno and ambien-ish soundscapes with overdriven rhytmic patterns rule here but somehow Mr. Speedy seems to make sense with all this noise.
Shocking indeed if you're after bubbling trance-techno like his first album, but if you're into something not quite straight forward, this is the album to get.

A Shocking Hobby is a godsend to those who crave harsh, distorted beats, but not so much that the eeeeery background harmonies and other noises are lost behind all the clutter or become reduced to compositional unimportance. The music bubbles here and there with organic fizzy sounds in the midst of factory-like thuds, hisses, and clankiness. Picture some of the more ear-piercing Aphex Twin material colliding head to head with elements of Coil on crack. ....

Jochem goes deeper and deeper into basic sounds&voices as a primal feelings, with his uniqueness warm-blooded beats. For me it is a sound that lives in my brainpan background storage every single moment. A beat. A sound of tumor that kisses You. A birth. A_droid. android. i'm amazed.