Review Summary: who couldn't wub this album anyway?
It doesn't matter how many sizes too small your heart is, Entropy will bring warmth to it. Four Minds, Four Teen Perspectives feels like a guilty pleasure. I love jams, mathy post-rock indie grooves, and danc-ey-synths individually but getting all three into one band sounds like a sensory overload. Thankfully these four teens were able to find their individual places in this complex musical painting.
The guitar bass and synth all fill in melodies, rhythms and atmosphere, altering quite naturally. For coming off as so effortless the album has a wonderful sense of composure; the three tonal instruments (guitar, synth, bass) trade with ease between precise time-keeping, cacophony, and melody. They don't step on each others toes nor do they ever all fall into the background.
The boogie is unmistakable, human ears have never heard sounds like these before and upon receiving the signals contained within this album you will be compelled to smile and dance, just a warning (I strongly believe each moment of these tracks has an inherently implicit interpretative dance move that accompanies in it.) These feelings, I have found, do not dissipate, but grow stronger. The band switches from exuberant to genuine all at a moments notice; I can't ruin the story for you but expect a sonic journey, complete with twists between “tracks” as the EP plays out as one composition.
Four minds sounds like it was recorded live; not in a negative sense. The timing isn't maddening, it's just mindwarping. At some points of the album there's a feeling that you've been sent one direction and the timing has gone somewhere completely different but somehow Entropy manages to give you that feeling of “how the hell did that work out?” after some of their more off-the-wall transitions. Like any good album recorded without a click, your ear grows really accustomed to the groove of the track, and you can really anticipate each sound for its placement instead of the tracks sounding odd.
There's room for expansion in this groups sound, and they leave plenty to be explored at the end of “IV”. The synth could have been more atmospheric instead of melodic, but who couldn't wub this album anyway? That being said, I always want another track when “IV” closes, and that is an observation I don't make very often while listening to instrumental music.
