siLLy puPPy
BUCKETHEAD - PIKE 62 - OUTLINED FOR CITACIS 21st album out of 60 in 2014 and 92nd overall All sounds brought to you by Buckethead and all instrumental This one has 9 tracks (if you can call them that) that clock in at 29:56 All tracks are titled “Citacis” just like the previous PIKE except this one ironically is followed by numbers 63 thru 71 The tracks pretty much run into each other to form one long piece of “music”
“Citacis 63” starts things off with thunderous guitar chords, electronic whizzing effects, a funky bass and then some avant-garde soloing techniques. It’s a very noisy affair with everything playing a boisterous display of powerful and distorted angular rhythms flopping around like a loose garden hose. After a while it takes a complete 180 and turns into a dark ambient trippiness that would be a great spook soundtrack bringing the Halloween countdown series to mind. This very much in the vein of the previous PIKE only more adventurous as it can drift from funk to ambient to noise in a measure or two
In no time at all you realize that tracks are completely meaningless as is song structure for that matter. The album is simply a parade of style samples some familiar such as funk and metal solos and others just plain bizarre, startling or horrific. There is absolutely no rhyme or reason as to which sound is stitched to what follows. A calm ambient passage can be interrupted by a filthy grungy guitar riff and then break into an electronica dance party only to break into dungeon synth with a playful xylophone sound trying to make a melody but not quite accomplishing it. Then back to thrash metal, then echoey spooky clean guitar with squeaks and then something else completely new.
This is pretty much as extreme, bizarre and experimental as rock can be taken. It’s almost like a collage band like Faust meets early Sonic Youth, add early Boredoms, a little Funkadelic, a little Slayer, some Eddie Van Halen with a side order of Throbbing Gristle and then you can only begin to fathom what’s going on here. Definitely only designed for the absolutely insanely adventurous music freaks. Yeah, i’m one and i really dig this type of stuff. The utterly unpredictability is what makes this so freakin’ amazing. While not the first PIKE to tackle this hodgepodge stylistic approach, OUTLINED FOR CITACIS has its own personality for sure. This is so weird you simply just have to listen to it to comprehend for no words can come close to preparing a listener for the bizarre train wreck they are about to experience.