Review Summary: A true revelation upheld through various roads I travelled, and I dare say I may go back to explore - once more - this fascinating moment in time, truly. In other words, it is quite a fetching album, but I dare say no more. Please enjoy the review.
There are a multitude of disproportionate ways in which one may categorize and subdivide music quality. To perfectly understand and analyze this, join me as I properly and professionally give deep discourse towards the band dubbed HikkieP. They make music indeed, but when one imagines a band they may imagine a lead singer, a microphone, and accompanying band members that suit the band’s image and sound. With that image, one may also imagine music that the imaginary band produces. I dare say people may imagine something pretty to listen to, perhaps a plucked acoustic, or a soft and ordinary ballad. The music quality on offer differs vastly, it is music after all.
HikkieP just make noise, they are not preoccupied with the normalcy of how people usually make music. In fact, HikkieP are quite uncommon though they adhere to the genre of flashcore religiously. The sound that is produced from various loud instruments on hand could result in dead school girls according to album art from the band’s odd catalogue, and the image is both accurate and jarring. Now the review has come in full circle, for we must fully and properly dissect what is highlighted musically here. It is music, but it is raw, full formed noise meant for instilling some sort of visceral punch to the listener, and it can only be seen as rather loud. Whether such headache inducing noise is music or just noise merits quite a study, which I’m afraid I don’t have the time to engage in. Still, let us dive further into the little rabbit hole that HikkieP have strangely created.
In Textbook How To Live Brightly, instruments, synthesizers, and infinite glitches cycle in a sporadic explosion of unhinged, barely connected noises. The songwriting is terrible or perhaps brilliant because it is so unorthodox while so listenable, and the same can be said about the band’s glitch-laden soundscape. The moment of ordinary songwriting passes quickly after the opening of An Cramped Day, and the cacophony continues and continues and continues until the continuation is complete. The next track is Hyperpnea which is composed of none other than only glitch work. I find this all quite fascinating that a band would wish to impose upon their listener such obscure, and often borderline unlistenable “music”. What is the appeal here? Perhaps it is music to pretend to enjoy so as to fit in with friends, or perhaps the real experience is the live show. I will say this: it’s not all as bad as I am putting forth via text speech now, I am simply astounded and put in an unexpected position.
I believe that when all is said, and all has been considered, I consider this a great album. Surely, I cannot compare this album to any other for I do not regularly come across such music, but there is something here that was worth a look. In many ways, this album was even quite fun, perhaps it was the singing style and the way in which the punk guitar work intersected yet perfectly juxtaposed against the glitch noise. I may not be able to fully justify my opinion either, I simply know that what I listened to did indeed count as music that was pleasant enough to not pull myself away from. Perhaps it is not pleasant, I would not define it as pretty as such, but perhaps it is pleasant for it did indeed please me.
