THE STEREOTYPES OF TOMORROW

I went into 6LA8 expecting modern progressive electronic, maybe in even in the vein of the lengthy dance-inspired selections that have become popular lately. Unfortunately, I got a nearly 2 hour album of electronic post-rock.

The Stereotypes of Tomorrow is music that is extremely similar to groups like 65daysofstatic and God is an Astronaut, which is essentially post-rock with various electronic music additions. The formula for success is here: lengthy tracks, electronic ambiance, glorious crescendos, and the occasional looped guitar a la Gottsching. The main annoyances are the arbitrary spoken word samples that plague this album throughout its unjustifiably 2 hour long runtime (it's an obnoxiously long album), which brings the entire listening experience down hard.

Anyway, as I've mentioned, The Stereotypes of Tomorrow is an electronic post-rock album, but the first song, "Old Cassettes" is the only obvious post-rock track on the album and features the cliche post-rock quiet-to-loud dynamic that everyone has heard a million times by now since the mid-'90s. The following tracks, however, are much closer to the type of electronic music that I was expecting, ranging from hard-edged progressive techno, slightly glitchy ambiance, and thick electronically treated guitar playing. Still, it feels to me like 6LA8 is trying to match their contemporaries too closely. The way the vocal samples in "Dance to Forget" interact with the bass line make the track sound like a failed attempt at a lengthy rip-off of Boards of Canada's trademark sound.

There are a couple of standouts on this album which is fortunate considering (and I can't stress this enough) this album is 2 hours long. "Kirachi Nights [Mix A]" is a particularly aggressive densely electronic track that I guess wouldn't be too hard to dance to, and is somewhat similar to what F**k Buttons have done on Tarot Sport. "Morphine Candy, Anyone?" is one of the shorter tracks and sounds the most experimental, consisting of atonal distant guitar floating atop of perpetual clicking of a metronome and constant radio waves. "We're Floating... Not Swimming" and "For What it's Worth" are decent forays into spacey ambient techno but don't seem considerably interesting and the latter is plagued by the randomly selected spoken word articles. "Specific Spectacles [Mix B]" is one of the better selections, again being mostly ambient techno somewhat identical to something that could be found on an Aphex Twin B-side collection (which I have to admit is a sturdy compliment).

The Stereotypes of Tomorrow is not a bad album, and is undeniably progressive, and though it is labelled under my favorite genre on this site that apparently does not mean it will appeal to me greatly. I would however suggest this without hesitation to the many fans of post-rock in the vein of God is an Astronaut of 65daysofstatic, or even the post-post-rock electronic groups like F**k Buttons. Just be aware that this album, like 6LA8's other albums, are abound with arbitrary spoken word samples that clutter an otherwise decent album. The potential is here, but the fulfillment of the promise of a delightful album wasn't quite delivered.