MANNA/MIRAGE

Monkey With Golden Eyes is a pretty opener to the album, nice e piano soft bass and gentle wood wind. Halfway through the song adds marimba trills and while repetitive the song slowly gets louder due to the addition of various instruments saxophone, violin etc. Effective opener.

Hobart Got Burned opens with the ending of Monkey With Golden Eyes but quickly becomes saxophone squonking. For me this is a risky sound to use as it can destroy what was built up or lead me to disappointment with what follows. Sadly, this track does not work for me. Fortunately the song does build into something more musical but the quality of it is not high enough to justify the earlier sounds. I don't like that the only difference is pretty much a thumping bass drone, the energy level is unchanged, the saxophone still squeaking about. To really rub salt in the wound one is granted seconds of organ, only for it to be taken away. Hobart Got Burned ultimately does not build up into something very good, just some bass gets added when I would have wanted keyboard shredding and thunderous percussion alongside popping bass.

Amelia Earhart opens slowly, with sparse percussion slowly moving towards something. Boom, drums bass and keyboard bring the volume up, lovely entrance. Saxophone joins in to, I believe there are two harmonizing? The song then gets a bit quieter and goes through some fast changes, nice. Screechy violin over bubbling bass and speedy cymbal hits then all of a sudden it goes quiet then it changes again with great attention to mixing a variety of moods, calm sections of flute, to loud crunchy lead lines to literal screams to instruments nobody uses, pennywhistle!? After going through some fast changes for quiet some time (very clean transitions btw) an ambient section begins and takes the song to its unsatisfactory fade out ending. This song is pleasant to listen to but I find it suffers hard from a lack of identity for me and that ending really hurts.

The Adventures Of Captain Boomerang opens quietly with flute and e piano forging a beautiful pastoral soundscape. Then the flowers are torn asunder as Saxophone takes over and drums shatter the ground while Bass burns shrubbery. From here one enters a world of fast changes like the previous track. It's mostly pretty good, engaging music but I'm left a bit heartbroken by the constant interruptions of high energy sections with moments of nothing. I wish the sections were chained together better, too broken, too many holes preventing the song from reaching the highest levels of ecstasy. I also wish it was paced better, the song just stays kind of constant for the first fifteen minutes, despite constantly changing the overall energy level is actually static and pretty low. Also at around fifteen minutes for a couple minutes there is more ambient filler shit like the previous song then saxophone over slow bass and drums, so still low energy. Honestly this "climax" could have been so much better if the rhythmic support was better, aka if it's was faster then turtle pace. Anyways as per usual this section ends for some seconds of silence then tinkling piano then it builds up again to some nice full band work then again drops the ball then just ends, beep. Slow section -> fast section x 10 -> ambient filler to make the songs real beefy then fast section -> slow section until tape runs out = Track 4

Overall this is a pretty solid debut that could use better organization of sections in my opinion.

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