Review Summary: 🤡
There’s this feature on Rate Your Music that I really enjoy, where you can “favorite” record labels and get notified when a new release/issue is added to the site. It’s not always perfect; a lot of people add singles and reissues that I don’t really have much use for. But sometimes, you get a little treat. “Oh, I didn’t know that was coming out.” “They have a new record in the works? I’ll put that on my wishlist.” Stuff like that.
And other times, you get something like this.
I found Skippy Spiral through this RYM feature and Graveface Records. A label out of Savannah, Georgia, they’re decently well-known for an indie label, in part due to their signing of unconventional, yet popular acts from a wide variety of genres. I suppose in that sense, Skippy Spiral fits right in with Graveface. Mr. Spiral is an entertainment clown from the Savannah area who makes strange, industrial synthpop. Or at least that’s what I’m calling it because I’m not really confident that’s right.
It’s an interesting gimmick at least: clown does experimental music. Alright, sure. I’m game. I listen to dumber stuff on a daily basis. Plus, the album was on Graveface’s Bandcamp, so I wouldn’t have to go hunting for a copy. With that, I decided to check it out.
Circuit Circus, believe it or not, is a (loose) concept album. It’s supposedly about “humanity being uploaded into a supercomputer”, according to the album’s Bandcamp description. I will give Skippy Spiral this: he does a good job delivering the cold, depressing, world-taken-over-by-evil-robots quality throughout the album. You could definitely see this being used as the soundtrack to a subpar horror film about killer robo-clowns or something. But the thing about soundtracks is that they’re, more often than not, best left in the background.
At just around 37 minutes with 16 tracks, Circuit Circus goes in quite a few directions in a very short amount of time. One minute you’re going along with some lumbering electro-circus number (“Vicious Cycle”), the next you’re dancing to an energetic synthpop tune (Shadowish Puppetry), all while being pelted with awkward Residents-equse passages (“Cookie Spiral”). And that’s just side A. In the background of a more interesting movie, this could be passable. But as its own work, it is painful to get through. There’s a few bright spots for sure; “Running Program” and the title track “Circuit Circus” are decent. However, they can’t save the entire album, especially when it’s being billed as some sort of cohesive, strange concept album. While Circuit Circus does get the atmosphere of a quirky B movie right, it severely lacks any sort of driving force or intrigue (past the initial “clownwave” gimmick). But I don't want to be too hard on the guy. His heart does seem to be in the right place at least:
”As a loner and an outsider, I take pride in gaining fans who also consider themselves loners and outsiders and while in the shared space of my music, maybe we do not feel so alone anymore. Which is a big part of being a clown; it is the epitome of being an outsider.”
More power to you buddy. But I think I’ll go elsewhere for my circus synth fix.
