There's no shortage of albums in the world that, drawing from a multitude of audio sources, manufacture and present pastiche forms of song that reach in many directions at once and throw sparks at all of them, thus making them difficult to qualify. Such records (and the artists that make them) have been likened to poster-covered telephone polls erupting into song. While there is an obvious similarity in style to records like those in Apostle Of Hustle's Eats Darkness, the album is still most definitely a brand apart. While those other albums splay outward every which way and reach outward to incorporate bits of different sources, Eats Darkness seeks to condense the whole world – warts and all – down through just a single set of headphones. In the album's thirteen tracks, everything – literally everything one can imagine from gunfire and other disembodied sounds of violence to off-putting commentary to Brit-Pop to electro-clash to reggae to rock n' roll to trance and more – gets layered on top of each other to produce a perfect sensory depriving experience; if you buy this record, expect to put it on and do nothing else but listen while it plays because the urban sprawl of sound will stop an entire room in its tracks – it is that captivating.
…And yet, a case could be made for such results occurring because Eats Darkness is just so jarring and so different from any album that could even passably be called comparable. Track-by-track and movement-by-movement, the album is just so dense; Negativland and Girl Talk could be good comparisons for Eats Darkness, but those bands actually adhere closer to conventional song structures than this album does and it uses equal amounts of real-time instruments and samples in a complimentary way that those other acts do not. Veering between found sound composites and real-time performances of indie rock that could best be qualified as niche-less (some reggae here, charging indie punk there, Morrissey-esque Brit-Pop elsewhere) and earnestly attempts to encapsulate the totality of the human condition in about thirty-five minutes. Songs switch gears and directions at a break-neck pace and so regularly that it sounds as if the record is melting down from the crass opening of “Snakes” and at no point do the shocks stop from there.
While some moments here may indicate the contrary, Eats Darkess is never in danger of melting down though – these entire proceedings perch on the brink of self-collapse but the entire album is one giant sound collage experiment that is impeccably measured for best effect and designed to jar anyone within earshot. Themes of violence and conflict dominate tracks like “Xerses,” “Whistle In The Fog,” “What Are You Talking About?” and “Return To Sender” as bullets whiz through them at regular (but not on-time) intervals, bombs explode and people scream all with perfect, terrible clarity. That sort of juxtaposition and intermingling of dark and light subjects and tones – of danger and safety – will turn heads so fast that they'll threaten to spin off shoulders and really that seems to be the point. There's little question that singer/AOH frontman Andrew Whiteman is aiming to shake or flat out throw anyone looking for an easy, scenester-appeasing listen.
He is successful. While Apostle Of Hustle has always been the most complicated of the Broken Social bands, Eats Darkness sits above and beyond that stature; it's absolutely puzzling. It does work though – for the not-so-meek, the puzzle that this album represents is the most intoxicating part of the game. It may be impossible to decode but it's a whole lot of fun to try.
Artist:
Apostle Of Hustle online
Apostle Of Hustle myspace
Download:
“Perfect Fit” from Eats Darkness
Album:
Eats Darkness is out now and available here on Amazon .
