Following 2019's
Monitress,
Popular Monitress continues
Wobbly's studies in machine listening, using mobile devices running pitch-tracking apps and synths in order to generate improvised music. While he largely let the devices have their way with his keyboard improvisations on
Monitress, this time out he's provided more prepared content, and also interacted with the process a bit more. A couple of familiar guests help out as well:
Negativland's Mark Hosler adds jagged, screeching guitar riffs to "Lent Foot," and
Drew Daniel of
Matmos programs the rhythm to the regal "Every Piano," a hallucinatory procession of app-transformed classical instruments. Throughout the album,
Wobbly incorporates myriad voices gathered over the course of five years, transforming them into hacked Furby chirps and smearing them around and underneath the erratic beats and gloopy synth textures. A strong
Raymond Scott influence is present, made obvious with the presence of a track titled "Motown Electronium," but also in the gleeful, cartoonish melodies of pieces like "Cope by Design" and "Help Desk." The playful, beatbox-y "Synaptic Padberg" is a nod to Sister Harriet Padberg, the pioneering music therapist who wrote a dissertation paper on algorithmic composition, Computer Composed Canon and Free Fugue, in 1964. "Popular Monitress," a shorter arrangement of the epic title track to
Wobbly's previous album, is like a haunted version of Tomita's neo-classical synth fantasies, and more beat-driven tracks such as "Trillionth Riff" and "Thoughtful Refrigerator" resemble
Autechre's drawn-out jams, but more fluid and friendly. Strangely enough, even though it's more properly composed than its predecessor,
Popular Monitress seems messier at first, with multiple layers of beats and noises overlapping during the album's densest moments. However, it starts to make more sense the deeper one listens, and even at its most random-sounding, there's still an unexplainable superhuman logic propelling it forward. There's nothing stiff or clinical about this music, it all sounds so alive and spirited. ~ Paul Simpson