seven

Joe Abrescia's "Aural Blasphemy" is based in NY, and since early 1999 he has released three tapes. "Synopsis" is the second one after debut "Demonstration". The band's sound could be loosely described as rhythm'n'noise.

With this cassette demo the first track I encountered was "Beneath the Surface", and it initially crossed my mind that this is where I should put this tape. The first track was fairly repetitive and was an early indicator of the weaker elements of the music, but fortunately not the album as a whole.

The second track completely changed my view - nice use of strings, harsh rhythmic noise and danceable electro beats. You'd probably see me dancing to this one if the clubs played anything other than Apop these days. The song lets me down, as he again falls into repetitiveness. Still it has more interesting elements being a hybrid of mechanistic sounds and electronic beats.

The next track again shows some promise, and is probably the harshest on the tape and contains a decent guitar sample, but unfortunately it's overused. The next track is apparently a joke and seems to contain guest vocals by Beaker of the Muppets.

Overall this tape does show a great deal of promise and attempts to raise it's head from the morass of American trials in the noise genre. If AB can keep away from the easy trap of creating repetitive song structures, my prediction is that they could go somewhere.