exceptional ruin

vivian circle

guerrilla garage, 2008

Mood—Cinematic, heartfelt, mildly schizo.

Sample: "Mean to You"

Thoughts— Understanding what someone means by "experimental music" is an eternal struggle. As we've noted here in the past, it's highly subjective and stratified. I would consider Exceptional Ruin to be an experimental album in some ways, but I would not use that term to define it as a style of music at all.

The album has an overlying harshness to its aesthetic, one that helps to clarify a fine line of darkness and rough instrumentation. At times cinematic and heartfelt, each of the 26 tracks treads that line impressively, only dipping down below my comfort level a few times.

Let me explain; I don't listen to very much "dark" music... the type of stuff that hones a depressive edge, the stuff you might hear in a movie about a dirty city and its dirty people. So, anything that delves too deeply into that scene is not for me.

Exceptional Ruin counterbalances its moments of darkness with a sentimental joyousness, heard in the likes of "Just Cause", "Three Echoes" and "Mean to You". These comparitively brighter moments are by far my favorite on the album.

The vocal elements remind me a lot of a favorite group of mine, Binger The Voyager. They are subdued, scratchy, and only vaguely melodic.

Overall, it's a great listen, and I feel the album is strongest when listened to from start to finish. I'm reminded a bit of the times I've stayed up all night in strange cities. As the sun rises, these cities wake up in their own ways, and for that one day you start to understand how things work. Some of the tracks are a bit short for my taste... some feel like truncated concepts, but as a tableau it works.

Recommended? You should give it a shot. I can't say it's for everyone, but I do think that everyone would find something very sweet in it.

Link—alonetone.com/mrmoto66

Tracklist
1. Fanfare
2. A Lot
3. The Last Laugh Last
4. No Gain
5. Political Atrophy
6. Just Cause
7. Subject
8. The Sympathizers Doubt
9. Circus Max
10. A Rush to Adolescence
11. Theme from "Simple City"
12. Hope and Memory
13. Three Echoes
14. Portrait of Gerald
15. Mean to You
16. To Persist
17. V.
18. A wanting Want
19. Thruway Exits
20. The Look to Ahead
21. He Has The Mark of Recurrence
22. Fade
23. Sequence of Windows
24. Garbage In
25. Return of a Popular Mister
26. Delinquent