{"id":9322,"date":"2009-03-30T18:01:43","date_gmt":"2009-03-30T18:01:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=9322"},"modified":"2015-10-23T18:02:55","modified_gmt":"2015-10-23T18:02:55","slug":"album-review-mah-jongg-kontpab","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2009\/03\/30\/album-review-mah-jongg-kontpab\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Mah Jongg – Kontpab"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"mah_jongg\"<\/p>\n

Boy, does this album suck.<\/p>\n

Nothing much happens musically for the first two and a half minutes of the nearly six-minute “Pontiac.” Listening to it is like wandering into a drum circle populated by robots. The aptly-titled “Problems” evokes images of an out-of-tune Human League. Its expressionless delivery is sub-Gary Numan headache-inducing clatter. The skittering guitar runs on “Kottbusser Torr” sound a bit like early 80s Robert Fripp (King Crimson), but the track itself isn’t compelling. “Tell the Police the Truth” sounds like what you’d hear in the video arcade in a mall near you…in 1982.<\/p>\n

“Those Birds are Bats” is the closest thing to an actual song on Kontpab<\/i>, but that doesn’t mean it’s any good. “Wipe Out” — not the Surfaris hit — is more annoying start\/stop noise, the sort of thing any teenager with a Casio, a drum machine and a four-track Fostex could have conjured up in a single 1983 afternoon. “Teardrops” sounds like German synth group Trio (“Da Da Da”) minus the whimsy. “Mercury” actually has a catchy beat, but the vocals — alternately spoken, wailed and moaned — are grating. The final cut “Rise Rice” starts off with a throbbing synth drone and percussion that sounds like someone kicking a 55-gallon drum down an alley. Then it gets worse. Four minutes in, I begged my CD player: “Please, make it stop!” But the track stole four and a half more minutes of my life.<\/p>\n

Mahjongg seems to have gathered up all the weakest bits of the 80s. If you want to hear some good industrial\/synth stuff, dig out an old Throbbing Gristle record instead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Boy, does this album suck. Nothing much happens musically for the first two and a half minutes of the nearly six-minute “Pontiac.” Listening to it is like wandering into a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2494,26,65],"tags":[2511],"class_list":["post-9322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-awful","category-electronica","category-review","tag-mah-jongg","cat-2494-id","cat-26-id","cat-65-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9322"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9323,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9322\/revisions\/9323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}