1 out of 5

Label: Digital download from Bandcamp

Producer: Dave Gardner (“audio sweetening”)

Ugh and double ugh.  This is Knol Tate from Hidden Chord?  I catch it in some moments – the sharp mixing, some of the electronic doodling – but otherwise this release starts tolerable and then quickly shifts into repetitive, saving downright annoying for the last track, the appropriately annoyingly titled ‘Girlfren.’  I do accept that this was a one man act at this point, and Tate does sprinkle some worthwhile concepts around and about – some good background elements on opener ‘The Last Poem the Last Poets Wrote,’ interesting drone distortion to the vocal styling on ‘I’m a Radio,’ (even though the track is the first drop of ‘stop this shit’ in the soon-filled bucket) and ‘The Monster of Martin Street’ seems to be a template for how this could become an interesting project, the song emerging from haze into song (again annoying, however).  The production is bright and tight, as it was with Hidden Chord, instruments ringing across purely and at just the barrier of loud before becoming too loud.  But unfortunately, this can’t cover up how forced most of these tracks seem to feel, lyrics fluttering between stupid clever prose (‘Last Poem,’ ‘Monster of Martin’) and narratives about things that just sound like daily journals and carry no weight (‘Girlfren’).  There is one pretty awesome track – ‘Party @ Liquidation’ – that rips a NiN Closer-era beat and funk and makes for a good stomp that distracts from more who-cares lyrics – but it comes too late in the game to make a difference, weighed down as you already are by songs that do nothing but loop a drum beat, throw on some fuzz or keys and have Tate singing, nasally, one lyric over and over.

The dude’s got a lot of output as Askeleton as has expanded to include a billion members at various points, so I’m curious if the sound turned into anything more tolerable, but ‘Modern Fairy Tales’ is, to me, fairly close to pointless on the music scale, and would prompt dumb comments like “no wonder it was free” and etc. and etc.  Beep.