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CRUELTY CAMPAIGN: Distressed Sigals Release year: 2001 Format: CD Tracklist: 1: Arrival 04:44 Total playingtime: 55.14 min General Facts: Cruelty Campaign is the project of John Griffin and Scott Townsend. After releasing two demo-CDR's, they were picked-up by none other than Tesco, which resulted in the release of their debut album, Distressed Signals. For more information, click here to read an interview I did with John and Scott. Review: What we have here is a project focusing on creating music almost completely with various site-recordings. Everything from department store samples (I think) to the broken refrigerator of Roger Karmanik of CMI and BDN have contributed to the realisation of this CD and it is amazing how many details it holds. Distressed Signals contains elements of industrial, noise, ambient as well as drones but the word which this description must eventually end with is definitely experimental. Yet Distressed Signals definitely sounds like music, the sound texture is rich and often quite relaxing and interesting. This album is like an odyssey through sound which sets the mind on "curiosity" and forces you to philosophise over the origin of all these sounds which pour out of the speaker. Some are quite apparent, like the Johann Sebastian Bach piece which is used in the first track, or that domestic argument in German in the third track for example. Some are much harder to determine, though, and I often wonder what I am actually hearing while I am listening to this album. Many of the sounds feel very familiar yet I cannot determine where I have heard them before. Besides the multitude of samples, a few sounds are made with synthesizer banks and many of the tracks also contain sampled interviews. On the track Colder Death Now (undoubtedly referring to the above mentioned refrigerator) for example, there is a low-pitched interview with a Swedish journalist who talks about the connection between the Swedish climate and melancholy. Surely this track is one of the highlights of this CD. There is also a sampled robot voice from an old sci-fi movie in the track Voice of World Control that gives the track a genuine old-school sci-fi feel which is nice. I could give several other examples but I think you get it, there are a lot of interesting events to indulge in on this release. Well, what else can I say about this CD? The atmosphere which is created and maintained in the various tracks is absolutely great. Sometimes it feels sick, sometimes cold, sometimes old cinematic and sometimes I guess the most proper word would be unorthodox referring to the strange mixture of sounds. Cruelty Campaign has really succeded in maintaining the flow throughout the entire album without becoming repetetive. Each track carry with it an interesting theme to be explored and this is a CD which evolves the more you explore it. - Click here to read a Cruelty Campaign interview. - Click here to visit the Cruelty Campaign homepage |
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