There’s a more bad noise-experimental in the world than good noise-experimental, it’s just an easy thing for a bad musician to pick up and find a gig with, and if you’re not a musician at all and your product doesn’t actually sound like music, then that’s all part of the show! So forgive us if the bullshit-detector gets turned on as soon as we hear there’s anything gadget-noise related on the radar.
But Timescratch is actually really amazing and makes music, rather than ill-considered improv dross, with a lot of layering going on rather than just butting a bunch of different sounds together end to end. Most importantly of all, the level of thought that’s gone into the compositions is obvious right from the outset. The end product sounds like a video arcade where the noise of all the machines together has somehow synchronised to form some sort of a mutant orchestra, each machine seemingly competing to be the loudest, but somehow forming one fluid, albeit angular, sound.
While I do like the idea of a room full of classic arcade machines forming a loose neural network and somehow becoming self aware, only to start a band, it’s not going to happen, so Timescratch is the closest we’re likely to get.
