Review Summary: Every decade has some hidden gems. This is one of those. Escape From Noise is one of finest examples of avant-garde sound collage ever.
Escape From Noise is kind of concept album, but what the concept is remains quite a mystery. Mainly it is a critique of the American sound culture. The first song, "Announcement" is calm host speaking about the record breaking on radio with a nostalgic synth melody playing in the background. The next song "Quiet Please" is a drum machine driven funky play. "Is there any escape from noise?", among with other spoken samples can be heard in this funny and chaotic song.
The next track, "Michael Jackson" is even more of a field recording. It starts of with some people discussing and having this little synth melody for a while. Then the song goes to another direction with a girl complaining to Michael Jackson about her dress becoming dirty after riding bicycle. A very loud yet distant voice is heard listing the names of famous pop and rock stars. A hypnotic ambient melody is heard in the background too. At the beginning of the next song "Escape From Noise" this synth melody from the latest track returns and runs as the main melody of this song. "Is there any escape from noise?" asks a complaining voice. This song features a simple drum machine beat and some electronic noises too.
"Supposing you are watching the Playboy channel..." starts the track "Playboy channel". This is one of the funniest tracks on this record. Weirdly it has an actual melody too, even tough not a very conventional one. The next song "Stress in Marriage" continues using a similar synth melody to the one from the title track. "Is there any escape from noise?" even more desperate voice asks. "Nesbitt's Lime Soda Song" is maybe the most traditional song in this album. It comes as a kind of suprise too, a folk song between all the sample based industrial mess. This song has very ironic lyrics too. Near the end of this song some experimental sounds come in too. The end of this song is very unexepted, with a man yelling "Get out of here!".
The next track "Over the Hiccups" containts a little girl singing "Over the rainbow" while having hiccup. Surely the most minimal song on this album.
"Sycamore" is a song about gun-control. At this point of album it's concept becomes very clear. The next song "Car Bomb" is a quite panicing and industrial experiment with the bomb sound being the main thing. "Methods of Torture" tells us about sound being a method of torture. It has a very nice synth melody too. "Yellow Black and Rectangular" has a nice synth melody with people discussing about yellow black and rectungalar things. It is an obvious parody of therapy. The next song "Backstage Pass" has very asian sounding melody. It also contains very heavy industrial drums.
"Christianity is stupid" is a classical song. Having very industrial melody and beat, it contains samples from the christian propaganda film "If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?". The samples have been rearranged so that it sounds like "Christianity is stupid. Communism is good" A very fine example of sample-based industrial. "Time Zones" is another Negativland classic and tells us about the Soviet Union and it's time zones, continuing the themes from the previous song. This song parodies the Cold War situation.
"You Don't Even Live Here" starts with a very ghostly beat. It continues into a synth melody with a drum beat and then the ghostly beat returns again. This song tells about corruption in the United States. The song ends with very chaotic noise and screaming. "The Way of It" starts with the synth melody from "Stress in Marriage", but with some static noise. This song is another song about noise. The repetition of the same synth melody in many songs makes this album quite boring sometimes. "Endscape" is the final song on this album. "Mister noisy gave uh..." a woman says and then the audience bursts to applause.
