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MC Trachiotomy: With Love from Tahiti
MC Trachiotomy is a direct product of the digital revolution. With the advent of personal recording studios made possible by affordable computer systems and powerful recording software, any John Doe on the street can seemingly become a musician by digitally manipulating instruments, vocals, and sampled sounds. Such is the case here on w/love from Tahiti, a 70-minute-plus pastiche of beats, rapping, and assorted ambient noise that is at times interesting and inventive but never gripping enough to fully absorb the listener. Trachiotomy no doubt has a sea of styles and noises swimming amidst his head, and he uses this album to drain them all out, no matter how seemingly disparate the elements. The backbone of the vast majority of the album is the beats, often funky and groovy as on both the opening and closing tracks. The groove the beats establish throughout the album is subtle yet strong. On many of the tracks the beats are overlaid with Trachiotomys rapping, which is extremely distorted and unintelligible throughout. Distortion is a key theme of the album, as not just the vocals, but also many aspects of the background percussion and the computer noise, are run through different distortion filters. Two influences appear on the record, and they both seem to be sources of inspiration but in extremely different ways DJ Shadow and Tom Waits. The entire structure of the album and its use of digital software to combine odd ambient sound with beats and instrumentation into one long-flowing artistic statement are obviously heavily influenced by Shadows Endtroducing.. Track 8 especially reflects a Shadow-like mellow yet intense groove. Much more surprising is the Tom Waits influence. Seven songs exhibit Waits-like vocals and odd percussive rhythms, while the Waits-inspired emphasis on creating new and interesting sounds permeates the entire album. Track 7 almost plays as a Waits parody it features a gruff, loud voice shouting nonsensical syllables over weird percussive chimes and noises, orchestral flourishes of woodwinds, and a child laughing maniacally in the background. There is a definite The Black Rider / Bone Machine feel to these songs. But simply assembling these sounds and influences into such a collage is not the entire point MC Trachiotomy is obsessed with tempo, and he takes full advantage of his computer software to continually speed or slow the rhythms, to pause the music for a few beats, and to insert seemingly random sound bytes into the middle of the music. Whether it is a simple beat-driven rap number, lo-fi 70s soul music, or even swelling strings, Trachiotomy never lets the song progress at a normal pace uninterrupted for very long. These digital manipulations at first make the tracks interesting but then grow tiresome when continuously repeated over the course of the entire album. This is a
complex album with myriad styles, high ambitions, and much rich detail that
grows sharper with repeated listens. However, despite the crush of interesting
ideas that Trachiotomy explores, the groove never takes over to launch the album
into the realm of baby-makin music that its liner notes claim it to be. At
the end, you feel like the album should have taken you to a higher level that it
never achieves. Still, it is an admirable effort and amply rewarding for fans
of music with non-traditional song structures.
This album can be purchased at Amazon and CD Universe LEFT OFF THE DIAL's MC Trachiotomy page About LOTD Contact/Staff Advertise Home All content © LEFT OFF THE DIAL 2001-2005. All rights reserved. |
