Read on for my review of Small Mammal’s self titled CD, which is a great value at $5.  Matt is distributing this title himself and can be reached via his myspace page.  You can also download a promo 2-track pack from the CD here.

Matt,

Got your CD in the mail yesterday.  I’ve had the chance to listen to it twice since then.

The CD is very intricate, from the moment you pick it up.  I loved the cover – I’m very in to the idea of CDs as a “tactile” format.  I like picking up a CD and looking at it, and the packaging certainly has an effect on me.  Unfortunately this idea is lost on a lot of people, since the days of going to the record store for a few hours is gone, having been replaced by iTunes.

The intricacy continued once I got it in my CD player.  I can tell that every sound on the disc is the result of a deliberate, programmed action.  The live guitar and drums sound great especially after you get them into your sampler for modification.  Nice glitchy chops and edits.  The quality of the samples and instruments was very consistent and pleasing.

My favorites on the disc were tracks 1, 2,and 3.  (10 is a close runner-up).  I can’t say I’m familiar with all of your influences(like Boards of Canada), but my musical heritage does include some Aphex Twin, Autechre, and Dntel(as well as Postal Service).  I can definitely appreciate the IDM(if that’s a word you’re comfortable with) influence in the first few tracks’ glitch-hop style.  The rest of the disc is simply fascinating and I can definitely hear the echoes of Phillip Glass’ complex chord composition, Corea-esque electric piano, and the great use of space found in Dark Side-era Pink Floyd throughout.

The disc definitely has made it in to my “rainy day classics” file, along with Massive Attack’s “Mezzanine” and Aphex’ “Druqs”.  Thanks Matt for conducting this experiment in the barter system with me.  I hope you enjoy your new CD.

Good luck,
Karl

P.S.  Matt contacted me directly on the “Contact” page here on randombeats.com, which began our exchange.  If there are any other independent musicians out there that want to engage in a similar CD exchange, I’d be glad to hear from you.  All it will cost you is postage.

Similarly, I intended for this tune to be a little more difficult of a listen.  The tension manufactured by the dissonant chords is meant to be somewhat uncomfortable. The piano is one of the only consonant sounds in the mix.

Although I hope none of the music on this site evokes any kind of response similar to watching “Funny Games”, I hope you can appreciate this track’’s significance in it’s own “ugliness”.

Spending as much time as I did reading the book, it became a natural source of inspiration for me.  Unfortunately, this inspiration came about in the form of terrible recurring nightmares about Hell, damnation, and the Devil.  A day came in about 2001, when I was just getting into music production, that I was able to focus all of this emotion into a song that I called “Why I Hate Dante”.  I finished the song in an afternoon, and I don’t remember doing much of it.  Looking back, creating the song was somewhat of a mystical experience for me.

This song remains to be some of my best work.  It has a strong trip-hop groove that evolves throughout the song until it finally reaches critical mass and turns into a thrilling drill and bass monster.  This is one of my longer works but I guarantee the tension justifies the entire length of the track.

Today, I present a very minimal, space-music inspired ambient-dub piece. Headphones are pretty much required for this exercise.

The vocalist from “Existential Funk” is a bit of a poet.  She’d gotten into the habit of leaving strange messages on my phone with the intention that I would use them in my music.  She left this one that was particularly inspiring.

I think this could have easily been converted to a trance tune, but I felt the airy, ambient nature of the vocoded vocal and the synth together worked wonders on their own.

Although not really holiday-inspired, the track reminded me a lot of winter and the epic emotions we all go through during this time of year.

Enjoy your holidays!