BUCKETHEAD — Pike 115 - Marble Monsters (review)

BUCKETHEAD — Pike 115 - Marble Monsters album cover

Album · 2015 · Non-Metal

3.5/5 · 2015-10-30
siLLy puPPy

PIKE 115 - MARBLE MONSTERS is the 14th album released by BUCKETHEAD in 2015. Just clocking in over the half hour mark at 30:37 and once again all instruments performed by the chicken lover. This one contains four tracks and are all instrumental.

Track one “Marble Monsters” is a bizarre experimental piece that is some kind of industrial ambient piece. There are very muffled strange scales of sounds going on with electronic sound effects. A muffled guitar can be discerned. This track only last 3:14 and is basically an unpredictable parade of weird sounds that contain a few discernible musical patterns here and there.

Track two “5 Sided Chamber” is the longest track at 10:09. It is basically a continuation of track one. It is a weird collage of strangeness with a discernible guitar shrouded with effects playing some kind of patterns but nothing that could properly be called melodic by most music lovers. Once again it makes me think of some kind of industrial dungeon synth stuff with wild echo effects and production manipulations. The sounds are startlingly bleak and freaky. They seem like they are churned out randomly for the most part with only some parts being deemed musical. This is some freaky crap that is perhaps the most bizarre thing BUCKETHEAD has done (that i’ve heard so far anyway). Come to think of it, this reminds me a lot of the bizarre world of Merzbow with random electronica noise, droning and free improv.

Track three “Burning Eyes” continues the dark ambient weirdness only the irregular rhythmic patterns are changed up a little. It begins with some kind of dulcimer-like sounding percussive, uh, riff? It repeats but is a time sig freak’s dream come true as it is quite choppy. The 7:21 track continues and gets more aggressive. It basically combines echo effects with strange time sigs and electronic embellishments. This one actually reminds me of John Cage’s avant-garde take on playing piano by plucking the strings instead of using the keys to strike them.

Track four “Lost Cities” is the second longest track at 9:43 and starts off with the same guitar and bass effects as the other tracks. A weird dungeon synth type of ambience quickly follows and fog horn type howls punctuate the locked-in-a-steel-coffin type of echo and reverb.

This is experimental to the max. This one will no doubt alienate anyone who only wants the usual rock, metal and DJ electronica that BUCKETHEAD usual dishes out. This is a murky mass of distortion, cacophony and irregular angularism reminding me of an odd shaped moon of an outer planet in the solar system where all perception is askew and nothing is familiar and safe. Personally i have an appetite for this kind of extreme disregard for anything familiar and love the isolating effect that forces me to recalibrate my reality to understand and comprehend. While it’s impossible to quantify such alien soundscapes in comparison to other music, i find myself liking to listen to this one quite a bit. Keep in mind that there is no metal, no rock, no funk. Just strange avant-garde sounds that have no connection to Earthly sanity. Personally i would rather hear this kind of freakiness than stale and boring drawn out rock instrumentals that all sound the same.