Review Summary: Collapse the wavelength, embrace the new reality
In a world in which spontaneous creation seems to be a dead concept, in which everything has been gilded with a cynical calculability, even in creative endeavors that ostensibly shy away from the foul blot of commercialism, a genuine act of spontaneity is both a rare and blessed thing. Evidence that an artistic endeavor can surprise, can attempt something that is, if not completely
ex nihilo, at least untethered to conventional standards is rare enough. That it can then rise above its influences to stand above the seas of tepid mediocrity through its very rejection of those standards is almost miraculous.
Writing that opener has me worried that on listening to the album, readers unfamiliar with Pizzamachine are going to think I’m taking the piss, that I’m being ironic in some poor attempt to be funny. And there are many moments on
Hellish Devices, such as the psychedelic funk cosmic toilet flush that is Crazy Sauce, when it genuinely is hilarious. But whatever the amount of irony Pizzamachine is employing in his manic breakdown of a genre mishmash, it can’t be denied that there’s very, very little out there that sounds like this album. The closest comparison that I could make was the frenzied mutilation of Rock n’ Roll that was the Gerogerigegege’s
Tokyo Anal Dynamite. Much like that album, the conventions and attitudes of Rock are brutally dismembered, its rebellious posturing torn from its bloated carcass and flung it its face. But
Hellish Devices doesn’t do so through violent confrontation, as does that titan of Japanese noise, but rather through its sense of waggish good nature, a playfulness that “quirky” artists like Kyary Pamyu Pamyu could only dream of. Psychotic Urge opens with a low budget keyboard line and some tinny percussion effects before launching into a gleefully orgiastic blast of bedroom black metal that gives way to the same odd-tempo keyboard phrase over a layer of noise and what sounds like a crying baby. Intermood is a genuinely claustrophobic piece of industrial drone that gives way to oppressive dungeon synth, before flipping the script into the guttural roar and “BONGBONGBONGBONGBONGBONG” of Demonic Entry, accompanied by what sounds like a squeaky desk boiled together in a roiling, mad churn.
Pizzamachine’s mélange of madness is a frenzied little testament to what can be accomplished by one man and a machine. In this miserable, irony-poisoned world, it may be difficult to take at face value that someone could not only take this album seriously, but derive a genuine sense of enjoyment out of it. And maybe I’m just musically jaded to the point that anything remotely original feels like a breath of fresh air. This isn’t an album that was intended to be listened to seriously, in fact I feel like a genuine examination of this album might make its creator a bit uncomfortable, a fact that has me hesitating to even write this review. Nonetheless it deserves a serious look, and there is a case to be made that in its rejection of polish, pretense and good taste, it reveals something very essential about the spontaneous joy of an eruptive creativity, of creating for the simple joy of pushing outward from oneself in any number of directions to see just how far an idea can go. In a world where nearly every creative endeavor of note is a hypercalculated conglomeration of composition, image and packaging, say yes to manic, free spontaneity and the untrammeled flourishing of life. Say yes to pizzamachine.
