Review Summary: Destruction of experimental music's integrity.
Over the many years of modern music, has the tag “experimental” become synonymous with “good music?” How many bands considered to be progressive, experimental, or avant-garde actually get negative feedback on their material, at least from most of the listeners? Honestly, the answer is not many, but is this because we have a confirmatory bias for progressive music, or that because most progressive music is actually good? I believe a mixture of both is present, but with Pipher’s “Vendetta Lullaby,” everybody's opinion has got to be unanimous. This is where experimental music becomes a cliche.
Pipher is the musical project of Canadian author Lee Thompson. I’m not sure what this guy actually thinks about his “experimental music,” which is pretty much everything he has ever done excluding “His Creeping Gospel.” I would feel very stupid after bashing this if he believes (or knows) that his experimental music is pure ***. But in this review I’ll pretend that he doesn’t.
“His Creeping Gospel” was the first album I heard from Thompson. Ethereal, modern folk music with a pinch of dream pop, a wonderful demonstration of his potential. In fact, I enjoyed it enough to download a second album of his.
For some reason, I didn’t actually listen to anything off Vendetta Lullaby before downloading it. I was simply expecting something similar to His Creeping Gospel. But the two albums are basically polar opposites, folk music and migraine-inducing-electronic-fuzz-and-noise.
I’m unable to describe this album in general terms. It sounds like it’s a small step up from Untitled (Silver)’s “album” Circulatory System. Just go to his last.fm page now and listen to a sample of the song Vendetta Lullaby. The best song off the album, it at least as some kind of structure and might be a bit hypnotic.
This album shows a prime example of the “innovation is art” kind of mentality. Unfortunately, there’s a fine line between good experimental music and bad experimental music.
