Methane rain, methane snow. Such exotic phenomena would be expected to crystallize within the soupy high-pressure extreme-temperature atmospheres of ice giants. The artist known in certain corners of the universe as pizzamachine is not an ice giant, at least not to my knowledge, and yet one discerns traces of this cosmic alchemy at play in these tunes. Who or what is pizzamachine . . . oh, a bit of dis and a bit of dat. A nuanced human if you will. Nary a second is wasted crankin’ things up to 11 as first slice Pizza Trek gets super horny but not in the way you might expect from a project seriously committed to opening a portal back to a time when Le Disko sounded either revolutionary or a bit milquetoast but portentous all the same. Yes we’re shifting back to a time I’d reckon the golden days of electropop-cum-crunkcore, albeit this portal’s been tooled and configured for excellent coordinates. That is for maximum fun but with a substance that really holds up to scrutiny. Diamond-like. Pizza Trek is horny because it has horns and just horns, no lyrics or guitars yet (although there are some strings and a bit of drum). It's positively symphonic with an uplifting Gorillaz Plastic Beach sorta vibe that hardly prepares you for the demented pizza party to come. Likewise, Shriller Killer may itself present you with goofy track titles like SWAG IT UP!!! and Twinkly m/, but the album is no curio merely, nor does this EP exist in a vacuum. On the one hand, I hesitate to portray it as more significant than it is because, truly, it is at its core a fun and surprisingly listenable record fashioned by someone with an appetite for sound who had lots of fun making it. Gleefully executed and pleasantly derivative to the point of genre parody and that’s the (initial) point, nevertheless it should demolish any fears of pizzamachine as a straight novelty act. It fully deserves your time and attention.
The children yearn for the mines but pizzamachine knows better. Whereas a group like Millionaires adorn their capering electropop with pretty basic lyrical themes, our Za hero inverts the more materialistic fixations of late-aughts popcore, supplementing an already compelling sonic premise with lyrics that bite. The meal proper begins, appropriately, with Dinner Time. Out with those horns, in with off-kilter beats, woozy synths, and sludgy guitars. Deep growls alternate and overlap with lightly autotuned hip-hop cadence. We also get a groovy thesis statement delivered with humorously listless swagger:
BUCKETS OF GRAVY I DON’T CARE
I’LL EAT ANY TYPE OF FOOD ANYWHERE
MAYBE A POPSICLE TEDDY BEAR
DON’T CARE IF I EAT A POISONOUS PEAR
Wowza! This is funny and a little absurd while simultaneously laying the groundwork for the EP’s overall aesthetics and preoccupations. The energy here is undeniable: patterns are resisted, instrumental hooks teased but never denied, a maelstrom of bedroom industrial R&B conjured with the musical equivalent of flint and kindling. And honestly, it’s this characteristic of pizzamachine’s work, its dual restraint in handling technique and atmosphere, that keeps me coming back and finding more and more to appreciate. Indeed, some of the coolest moments on this cheeky lil thing took three, four, five spins to emerge from minimalist post-hyperpop pandemonium and sink into my lizard brain. Take the sixth track Losers: a dreamy harpsichord intro explodes with thrash-punk fury, but just as you start bobbing your head the album’s prudent trip-hop influence grabs the stage and you’re still bopping your head but in a new way. Third track Dabble seriously grew on me too. The riffs suggest a sea, the frenzied clattering of frail materiality under storm and stress: and just when it could get repetitive it swirls around and tends to a garden of sound. REAL submarine magic.
My therapist says nothing can make sense about a chaotic present unless you remind yourself why you’re doing what you’re doing in the grand scheme of things or whatever, to allow yourself to see the little freedoms still in your ballcourt. They steal your Gameboy, you sue and the court orders them to buy you a pack of Digimon cards. Hm. So perhaps you’ll stop appealing to those circuits of power. Fortune cookie platitudes. You are deliberate in your approach. You are an artist, show your true colors. Just listen to pizzamachine, who gets it. Who remembers. Shirts have been taken off, rich boys’ days have been made – and homage is paid to such realities, to be sure, but these are the days of wet bulb temps and there’s no denying that feature of the oven. Yes the pizza will taste good but this pizza will also tell you how it is being on the market. It’s such a natural quality you’d be forgiven overlooking it for the immediacy of flavor. And then there’s Blank Space (T Swizzle cover) the EP’s centerpiece and a thrilling journey that simply cannot be digested in a single listen. A doomy surf-rock groove is set against a murky atonal bog of drowned vocals. This bears little resemblance to Swift’s original, freeing listeners in real time from the ability to recall what, exactly, the song was meant to sound like in the first place. Beautiful stuff. I’ll Let You F***ing Go (Let It Go cover) operates similarly, collapsing the Disney hit into a brutal un-frozen quantum state of catharsis. This is a serious album with serious themes but don’t you dare accuse it of being ponderous you **********er. It is seriously fun and knows why and knows how. Deep awareness of sound invoked, rules be damned. The question of genre is equally equivocal. That said, listeners conditioned to the baser rhythms of the times, tempted into gross and cursory assessment, will hurtle ignorantly into the lamest of positions.
Look, if you’re reading this you probably already know pizzamachine or think you do. Pizzamachine has been reviewing music on this website for years, a veteran of the information age in fashion you either take for granted or have yet to realize. But I fear it is this very familiarity, this sense of casual kinship with an audience of fellow music lovers, that could conceivably keep this project from really taking off in the way it deserves. So don’t sleep on this thing, friends. This is to be consumed entirely: an equal and opposite reaction. Diamonds falling from the sky, indeed.
