Shadowbug 4: Tiny Voices of Love and Fear

sha-tvlf.jpg (10k) Shadowbug 4: Tiny Voices of Love and Fear
(Soleilmoon Recordings - 1999)

Under the monicker of Shadowbug 4, Randy Greif speaks in a dark, unknown tongue, understandable only by the most primal senses. Tiny Voices of Love and Fear tell twisted tales of solitary mind journeys through the subhuman atmospheres within our own pyches. Experimental and brooding electronics incorporate digitally misconstrued voices to convey feelings which mere words cannot.

Intermittent vocal disintigrations wander in and out of Greif's Room with Voice (6:30), which is scattered with odd rhythmic effects and arbitrarily arranged electronics. Undeniably eerie, Breather stalks a world of creepy ringing tones and mist-like swirls through which the wails of some poor tortured soul soar Doppler-style. (If it's too frightening to listen to, then scare the neighbor kids at Hallowe'en with this one!)

3 Become One when Greif reappropriates and reprocesses previous recordings. (I detect at least one Delerium track from Karma). Definitely the most upbeat piece, the result is a rhythmically translucent layering of altered sounds from which cymbal beats, female wails and buzzing bolts are emitted. Enigmatically entitled No, I Swear... Look at My Tongue (11:58) takes an enormous bite of otherworldy atmospherics and washes it down with streams of digital manipulations. Particularly spacey sounds emanate through the densely coalescing fog, which grows stronger and louder.

A dark convergence of jungle dub and some sci-fi soundtrack, You Can Come Down surges with electron haze and spacey warbles which are backed by steadily thumping ethno-drumming and a continually muttered intonation. Engulfed by cyclical loops of sound and radiating waves of electrodistortions, The Fortunate Slave resides in a spookily freakish, somewhat Middle-Eastern soundworld. Small cries emerge, as do odd, processed vocal snippets, wrapped in a hazily swirling cloak of sonic vapor.

Shadowbug 4's sounds are dark abstractions and can be interpreted differently upon further listenings, which keeps the decidedly warped overtones of Tiny Voices of Love and Fear fresh for future contemplations of isolation and insanity, or whatever morbid conditions you choose to read into these bleak waves of sound. A solid 8.5 for intriguing experimentalism. Contact Soleilmoon for purchase info. 8-5.gif
This review posted July 25, 1999

AmbiEntrance © 1999-97 by David J Opdyke (except CD cover art, rights retained by original owners).