Karash - All In

[longloststar]

Karash - All In

Review

 

 

1. Grouik

2. Blurb

3. Rainy Monday

4. Ratatouille

5. Deeper in the wood

6. Shinobi Killer

7. Sinus and Cosinus

8. La lutte finale

9. Behelit

10. Furious Indus

 

"All In" is traditional dark psy with occasional semi-melodical climaxes.

 

Let's start with the style. Often, the kick-line gets muddled in the bass and other low frequency sounds creating a beautifully chaotic mess that ranges all through the frequencies. This style is distinct from the more mathematically oriented dark psy, such as for example Bodhisattva 13:20. Psykovsky and Furious are other examples of this distinction. In this sense then, "All In" has more in common with Psykovsky than the latter. But it also differs from the funky dark, such as Mumbali, since Karash uses the bass as a skeleton for the song, rather than means to add to its complexities.

 

While "All In" is climactic in parts, it does not play all its cards on the climax. Usually, climactic music is all but made for home listening, my favorite example of this is "Headroom - Artelligent" which is simply useless for everything except going somewhat nuts on the dance floor. Karash keeps the interest up all through the tracks with interesting although traditional darkpsy madness of short high frequency noises backed up by a plethora of FX sounds of all kinds. Ah, how we love this rare occurrence in music; when I play Karash or his brethren in style at school on my laptop, half of the people passing by think my computer is dying some horrible computer death and the other half think I'm simply whacked in the head. Who can respect somebody listening to Lady Gaga anyway, right? Right. Actually I think Lady Gaga wouldn't sound half bad if you took one of her records, smashed it with a hammer and then randomly pieced it together again, playing it at 150 BMP over a solid kick and bassline. "Ratatouille" probably doesn't sound very far from this, right with the screams of the horrified bystanders.

 

Speaking of "Ratatouille", its one of the standout stars of the album. Here, the concept is perfected; we have rhythmic bursts of noises that wonderfully tickle you in five places, we have a perfectly hidden kick behind a deep and grinding bassline that simply does not quit; and finally we have a climax that takes the left half of your brain to hell and the right one to heaven. For some reason i feel like saying that this is music for real men. I just can't see a woman liking this, but if I ever do find one that does, I will make sure to marry her, unless she is fat, or looks like Lady Gaga in the face.

 

"Sinus & Cosinus" is another of the exceptional tracks. Judging from the name, one might expect a track from the more mathematical school of dark psy which I talked about previously. The only connection this track has to mathematics however is that its probably an accurate depiction of what goes on in the head of a retarded person (or someone equivalent, lets say an economics student, or a Lady Gaga fan) when this person tries to understand basic trigonometry. More on note, this climax is damn beautiful and actually a melody (if I am not mistaken, which I might be), which I guess would make it the only melody on the album.

 

Final comment: get this if you like dark psy.

[Rotwang]

Funny review, I love it! I still haven't heard All In but I'll be getting a copy based on what you've said.

[Rotwang]

After having owned this album for a while, I concur with longloststar's review. It's great.