Review Summary: Locust Toybox comes out with one of his most creative, inventive and powerful releases yet.
Locust Toybox, AKA David Firth, has been a favourite artist of mine ever since I heard Dead Wasps a couple years back. Known mainly for animating Salad Fingers, Burnt Face Man and Spoilsbury Toast Toast Boy to name a few, his taste for the surreal rarely made a full transition into his music. On this album, however, I believe he has succeeded in creating a dreamlike, floating atmosphere which could be seen on earlier albums, if more infrequently.
The opening track, Birthweek, is one of my personal favourite tracks from the album, and begins the album in a hazy wash of reverb-filled ambience with the main sound being that of a church organ. There are also some string instrumentation in the background, which I could not pin down to a specific instrument. This sets the ethereal and for the main part ungraspable feel of the album, and does so incredibly well.
It then moves on to Shapeless, where echoed guitars are laid over yet-more reverberated wind instrumentation. The crackle from his old, battered vinyl samples is apparent on this track, but brings a sense of age and decay to the song, as if it's being viewed fifty years after it had been left in a ditch. 3 minutes in, it takes more of a classic Locust Toybox turn, adding skittery drums over the instrumentation as it briefly picks up its pace, and and also gains some backing overdriven electric guitar, before promptly fading out on what seems to be a choir-like drone.
The Lizard Morgue begins with a reversed guitar which it uses as its main melody, before being cut to what seems like a ukulele melody with two heavily vocal tracks, the more apparent one being a chopped and screwed, very short sample, and some traditional drumming. It then fades into some wah-wah airy vocals before returning to the vocal melody. Then enters some vocoded vocals that have also been heavily chopped and screwed, for a short period, and the track ends on heavily processed piano and more choral singing, the instrumentation laid as close to bare as the album gets.
The fourth track is Lemons In A Jar, which sounds like it could have come off Dead Wasps. The song follows a main bass melody with an upbeat synth melody, and eventually a chiptune part, laid on top. The track uses what appears to be some sort of metallic clanging, possibly hitting a tin can, as percussion. Halfway through it transitions to a more ambient piece which uses heavy reverb over what could possibly be a violin or similar stringed instrument. Plucked guitar and synth drones enter the picture, as well as some hi-hats, before the track abruptly fades out.
The next, and longest, track on the album, Zaborav, uses a synth loop over some a drum machine with guitar and a metallic cleaning sound that has been manipulated into providing melody. The track slowly builds momentum and gains more elaborate instrumentation, with the introduction of arpeggiated synth, before transitioning to the synth alone with a very basic drum machine over the top. It again builds momentum, this time using different styles of synth and an acoustic guitar over the top, which in combination with the other parts makes a darker atmosphere. Heavily chopped, almost swirling, drum machine is introduced, to add to the atmosphere. But, just as one gets used to this, it transforms into a much lighter and more upbeat track that sounds like GYBE! at points. It then returns to the original synth loop briefly, then ends.
Come Back to the Swine is a much slower and more relaxed track with a straightforward melody to contrast the immense complexity and ever-changing nature of the previous track. It simply uses unprocessed drums, unprocessed along with the piano. The synth is very basic and wavers somewhat eerily, but not enough to make the track seem dark in itself. The track ends on a piano loop, which lasts for about 15 seconds.
Evert Boom is definitely one of the airiest tracks on the album, with what appears to be bagpipe instrumentation over more arpeggiated synth and choir vocals. A chopped sample of what I assume to be an old pop song appears in the track occasionally, as well as samples of rushing water. The sample eventually gets chopped even more and begins to almost take the role of percussion. Some guitars that would have fit on Daft Punk's Fresh enter the track later on, and now the vocal sample has been stretched. It ends on the original chopped sample which quickly loses trebly to the point of becoming watery.
The next track is a more ambient piece called Hurry, Poison. It uses overdriven guitars over airy synths to create a slowly rising atmosphere, before gaining traditional African drumming, a bassline, and another chopped vocal sample, before fading back to the original with some hi-hats, where it wavers between additional instrumentation and the original melody. It builds into a crescendo then gains the metallic clanking percussion similar to Lemons In A Jar. The track ends on a simplistic electric guitar melody and a synth drone.
Stringbox Sequencer uses cello instrumentation over some skittery drum instrumentations and short piano loops, before what sounds like a piccolo melody appears. The track then transitions back into its original state, and a squeezebox melody is introduced, somewhat-echoed, to the track. It ends on said melody, with a couple seconds of silence.
The next track, Mortician's Wife, uses a simple, glacially moving string melody with wind howling in the background. This sounds somewhat similar to a Cities Last Broadcast track, or something that could be used as a transition in a Natural Snow Buildings album. There are occasional synth notes, but as a whole it's more of a drone track than the rest of the album.
From the Rain Captain is the title of the next track, and it begins with an ominous guitar, before introducing very crisp synth and drum elements to the track. As a result, this track sounds somewhat cold compared to the rest of the album, and somewhat more apocalyptic. Voices come and go and it creates an almost haunted atmosphere. Near the end of the track, some semi-processed saxophone is introduced, though it sounds dissonant and slightly out of tune which adds to the ambience of the track. A short, reversed, synth phrase is played before the track ends.
The final track, Sulko, begins on an arpeggiated, low synth, and a higher pitched synth drone, which slowly becomes melody as the track progresses. The track is processed to sound especially washed out, and in that sense it is received as warm, as if the album is an old friend wishing you well on your journeys. Some siren-like synth is played, but it sounds so washed out that it loses its punch and just melds into the atmosphere. Some slowly plucked guitar adds to the combination, bringing with it an almost sad tone to this conclusion. Some short synth phrases are played which sound like something off Melodies from Mars by Aphex Twin, but only in short bursts, leaving the main sound of the guitar and synth drones to be the main focus of the track. It feels like this track is trying to prolong itself, but not in a bad way - it's almost as if it wants to leave you on a peaceful, harmonious note before you end the album, a "thanks for listening" of sorts. It's these type of closers, almost an auditory form of palate-cleansers, that I love.
All in all, the hazy ambience of this album, combined with the somewhat-contradictory now-typical weirdness of Locust Toybox's music, makes this an album worth revisiting at least a couple times. For me, this album ticks all my boxes, though for you it may not do the same. It never seems to really go anywhere, instead preferring to relapse on itself and slowly adding things, and that's just fine for me. Personally, this is a strong contender for AOTYSF for me.
