Many Moons

Paul Klee - Fire, Full Moon (1933)

A busy end of week has meant a departure from my usual chill slant to my listenings, so enjoy this week's little switch up. Starting off with a slice from the Portal 2 soundtrack, a far cry from it's purely ambient prequel, Portal 2 is full of gorgeous glitchy beeps and bloops twinned with the occasional cinematic orchestral feel. Case in point here with the fantastically titled The Part Where He Kills You, it takes a little while to get going, but the way the electronics come into the mix around 38 seconds in is sublime and it coveres all the bases I previously mentioned. Gets almost synthwave-y in parts methinks, and that title certainly wouldn't be amiss on something from the genre.



I'd actually forgotten that I even had this HEALTH song to hand, it kinda gets lost in the sea o Adult Swim singles. It's from after the release of Death Magic, the album that incorporated a more electronic feel to their work, but it has more in common with their previous noise rock stuff, particularly the raw drums that echo their work for the Max Payne 3 soundtrack at around 2 minutes in. That's not to say it's completley divorced from the electronic evolution they had, the ending breakdown starting around 2:45 is a fantastic melding of glitchy electronics and pounding industrial that you can hear just a little bit of Stonefist in, and actually reminds me a whole bunch of the kinda stuff Mick Gordon was making for the Doom 2016 soundtrack too.



And finally, speaking of glitchy sounds, another bit from Subhuman compilation. It's got kinda the same sensibility of Crusher in that it's mixing electronic styles with other industrial-esque sounds. Hearing it back to back with the above is a strange experience, it's a hell of a lot less raw in it's overall feel, some of the drums on Crusher feel like they're punching you in the gut whereas Memory is a lot more restrained in is delivery. Not to knock it though, I think it's combo of vocals and production is certainly interesting in it's own way. I only really have one complaint with it and that is the ending, the fade out just seems like a little bit of a cop out after the rest of the song.



-Claude Van Foxbat