Coming after a few EPs, limited CD-ROMs, and split CDs,
Audios is
Old Bombs' first bona fide full-length album. It's also one of their most uncompromising and dizzying releases. Then again, combining the Miami-based duo Fukktron (which includes
Dino Felipe, one of the strangest acts to record on Schematic) with
Carlos Giffoni, leader of the Brooklyn-based group
Monotract is sure to make sparks. And it does. Call it digicore, laptop frenzy, or the desperate cry of a disemboweled sampler, the music on
Audios sounds like a superball trapped in a House of Mirrors. Samples are brutally axed down to bits, recombined in frightenings ways, defaced further more through computer treatments, and finally reassembled into unstable beats, skippy statements, and outbursts of noise that don't make sense if you isolate them. Taken track by track, these
Audios are confusing and overwhelming. They offer nothing to grasp. But as a whole they form a coherent -- violent, extreme, but coherent -- artistic statement. And through these piles of butchered sounds runs a certain sense of humor that evokes the music of
Otto von Schirach (one of
Felipe's labelmates).
Old Bombs elevates audio discomfort to the art of entertainment. It doesn't make
Audios a pleasurable listen, but it ensures it isn't a dull one.