Rose For Bohdan

"Major Label Drugs" CD

Slide The Needle / Skylab Operations / Deathbomb Arc / Blackbean and Placenta

Genres: idm, indie rock

Slide The Needle
PO Box 7445
Olympia, WA 98507

Feb 24 - Mar 2 2003

Things start off with the just-under twenty minute epic, "Even Horizon."  After an extensive repeated guitar part, the track begins to become more noisy at about eight minutes in, with some dark guitar atmospherics gradually seeping through.  All of the sudden, the repetition just cuts out, instead making way for a number of spasmodic guitar riffs and some bizarre sample-based screwing around.  Eventually, it fades away in a gradual, minimal bliss.

"Turkey Day" is a surprisingly infectious tune that poses simple vocals over a background of acoustic guitar and wierd drum machine-esque percussion that sounds as if it came out of a broken Casio keyboard.  With genius lyrics like "If I give you this ring/You gotta be my baby/Buy me a pizza/Take me in your car/Down to the laundromat/Pay for my new suit/Buy me a Snapple/Take me to San Francisco/Give me a blow job/Give me a hard-on," it's a tongue-in-cheek tune that's guaranteed to get the listener chucklin'.

Later in the album we have a remix of "Rogue Princess Mischief" by Lesser, which converts Bohdan's indie rock track into a well-done collage of drums, vocals, and guitars - though scattered and messy, it still retains a definite charm.  After that, Figurine tackles "More American," converting it into a delicate, beat-y piece, as he also does in his fantastic IDM remix of "Surprise... Bitch!"

Altogether, Major Label Drugs is a very successful album that mixes elements of electronica with a nice indie rock touch.  Although the mixture of remixes and original tracks results in a somewhat disjointed combination, the quality of many of the tracks makes up for the bizarre flow. 

83%

Matt Shimmer

[Vitals: 10 songs, distributed by the labels, released 2002]