FERENTINO'S GOD IS LISTENING - PT 1: PRELUDE TO A POSSIBLE SONIC FUTURE

A new, Michael Ferentino album was expected and needed. The enriching God Is Listening: Prelude to a Possible Sonic Future fills the bill by opening the mind to unique, encircling vibes and profound, paradoxical phrases. Above all, the tracks link one unexpected component to another, creating what Clive Barker would call "the great and secret show." (In the end, every influential element, whether big or small, rich or poor, determines where we go, despite the passage being unclear, like pieces of a puzzle coming near, or at least this is my take on Ferentino's venture.) 

Parts of the album spring from a pop-cultural position, with twists upon names (titles) that have come to define our lives, made by appreciative (if not transcendental) mortals, all for God's discerning ears. 

For example,  "9-inch Sgt. Pepper" works as if the Beatles concocted a neo-Matrix, dance-floor mix, smacking of Lennon's sarcasm (though done through robotic reinterpretation), and yet it's all Ferentino, drumming and chugging along, "putting it on the wrong way" as he presses his sonic-era sweep. 

"M. Night Shyamalan" is an obvious homage to the writer/director, who's become a next-stage Serling for his clever catches. Ferentino's tune morphs itself much in Shyamalan's style, injecting an ode to irony at each piano-tingling turn. As one listens, one can feel the dimensional rift, the underlying sensation that one's ordinary stable is tumbling into an extraordinary circumstance.

"Never Darken My Door Again" clucks like a rapper's tongue, but pushed through a howling filter. This one sounds tribal, drawing a line in the sand, but having fun with its "punch in the ... face" telegraph. In other words, it implies holding one's head high to squash the haters when they dish their unjust dirt. 

"Celebrity Ass Kisser (Sychophant)" is a further denouncement of those haters, shuffling, slumping and banging in its condemnation of saps who look to others for approval. It besmirches being a government marionette, persuading one from prostituting oneself for some lame-duck, Faustian endorsement. 

"Wide" establishes an altogether different terrain, where one floats in the computing refrain of simultaneous denial and acceptance. It asks one to open wide, to reveal what one holds inside, letting it all unfurl for the world to see, forging yet another facet of revolt and with it, essential self-awareness. 

"Snark Chide of the Croon" is the rebuttal that one's opponents toss. In this instance, Ferentino's voice wavers with intoxication, mocking the slap-back with a culminating, laser-beamed assault. 

"Sacristy" extends the beam farther as it returns to an exotic, dance drive, though this time it slips a rubbery quip, for in truth, it references depletion, emptiness ... dissatisfaction. It takes what little there is and makes it something more.

"Cool Pool" presents a severe strangeness that dares to buck its placid label. There's a stream of damnation in its carefree guise, and to perpetuate this, the music trumpets like Charlie Brown's judgmental teacher, the lyrics warning of those outer, red flags that drag one down. (One needs to take the big dip and "get the f.... out of Dodge.")

"Little Head" takes a silky, jazzy approach, pleading to be taken where frustration doesn't exist. As its hypnotic draw builds, this one feels like an impassioned prayer from a small, humble heart, searching for a cure to one's despair, and because of its anxious reach, it plays more hopeful than not. 

"Adore" is hip as hell: an ideal punctuation for the album, where one ends up on the floor, tired and beaten like a discarded whore, begging to be adored. It's a reply of sorts to "Celebrity Ass Kisser," but in this case, it's the singer (the narrator) who demands the adoration. However, the recipient of the plea expresses firm rejection, wanting to "smash (one's) fingers in the door." The outcome is dire and cuts off fast, but its sting lingers, enough to infiltrate the other tracks, if one goes back and re-listens. 

Whether at life's commencement or close, God is Listening ... serves both epic ends, but does so nibble by nibble, chunk by chunk, blending it all into a magical mesh. It's a concept album in the sincerest form, just like the old-school masters wrote, ascending from the remnants of the past to seize a stellar future. (And to think, this is only the first part of Ferentino's scheme; one can only imagine how the other pieces will fit when one greets round two.)

Play God Is Listening: Prelude to a Possible Sonic Future at

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_lMllL02ObGh4AeOoPIF5S3obW3u2-4T3Y

LOVE IN REVERSE'S KEEP UPRIGHT: FULL ALBUM REVIEW

Love in Reverse, the acclaimed ensemble of Michael Ferentino, Andres Karu and Dave Halpern, rolls a new epic onto the playing field: Keep Upright. It's been in development for a spell, with the ardent tease of a couple, catchy singles last year, but now it stands in whole, and whoa!, does it ever strike a comforting, consummate chord. 

The title track (situated as the album's third) is, in fact, the key to understanding the concept's behavioral fabric, encouraging one to stand up and endure, in light of any and all ongoing trouble. It's a self-help kind of anthem, evading that devilish voice that promotes misery and woe, a path devoid of pretense or demands, tapping a contemplative courage that runs thick and fast through Keep Upright's related veins. 

For example, "This Heavy Feeling" (the first in the ten-track queue) captures the confines of fatalism in a manner that only Love in Reverse could render. It speaks of overcoming anxiety, explaining how nothing makes much sense when one faces trepidation, when one's soul feels enflamed, when one's brain proves a terrible trickster. 

"Summer of Horror" is next up, its title invoking a campground slaughter, but it's much more than that. Through Ferentino's pensive lyrics, a love is crashed and burned, or perhaps it's one that's never been born. The resulting pain, in all its glaring glory, presses through: identifiable to all who've yearned for a significant other, only to be ignored. 

"Too Much Thinking" follows the title track, reflecting daily concerns, when one worries about this and that, blowing that oh-so-important chance to keep some order. Ferentino's vocals drive this home with compassion and rage, with a heart-in-the-right-place empathy and I daresay, an ample layer of encroaching dread, which paints a vibrant denouncement of the no-way-out, rat race.  

"Care" commences the album's thematic flipside: a rejection of emotional baggage. To my ears, the track is a sweeping, relationship song, acknowledging the horrid flaws of one's  constitution that a loved one may rub in one's face, and therefore pushes the need for one to sever the necessary ties and escape. 

"Gently Screaming" pays homage to George Harrison's "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," but with a quickening cry that squeezes a listen-up plea, even when acknowledging that the game is fixed. It calls out zombies (in The Hooters tradition), instructing the populace to take note and avoid the bad that one unwittingly seeks.

The latter's message is re-imagined in "Lost Weekend," a title that brings to mind Ray Milland and an empty bottle, but it's really an antidote for fighting decades of doldrums. "Lost Weekend'"s chanted beat, its encircling, euphoric bounce, is sweet and contagious, which makes the act of gaining salvation, of falling in love, credible and as such, acceptable.  

"Lobotomy Song" swings the euphoria even higher, stretching a winding pass, with an on-the-road, 1970s feel. It celebrates shutting off one's brain, taking a vacation from the state of the nation and existing behind a satisfied, smile-less smile. 

Its sequel, "Let Her Run," creates another path to freedom, with an unshackled exaltation that's modern and spacey, with the fortitude to diminish a virulent lass and in so doing, leaving one all the better for it.

"Little Bird" ends the album's journey on soft, soaring wings. Its theme presses the need to please only oneself and not give a damn what the haters say. In this regard, it rejects those who reject, for the views of others mean nothing if they keep one glum. In this severance, this pervading punctuation, comes transcendental peace: indeed, the best means of all to keep upright. 

Keep Upright offers much to consume and appreciate. Attend the musical lecture at  

https://open.spotify.com/album/2xIYpETnNUa7I2IQ8kwkWj?si=1&nd=1&dlsi=7bf5f9a71bae48e9

MICHAEL FERENTINO'S CONCRETE PLATFORM SHOES: STRUTTING TOWARD HUMILITY

Michael Ferentino has unleashed a new, audio exploit: the weird and wonderful Concrete Platform Shoes. 

The album holds nine tracks and starts off with a retro crawl, interspersed with mean, kinetic spurts (i.e. hip, wild chirps). To me, the audio tapestry tells of traveling the streets in jazzy, Sonny Bono shoes, shuffling to a hot, Soul Train tune or maybe reflecting on a self-effacing joke in spite of oneself, and yet through it all, a heavy foreboding snags one's feet, thanks by Ferentino's admonishing beats.   

Within his second and third selections, the ominous atmosphere thickens, ushered (good gosh) by an Arthur Fleck guffaw. The streets look and sound demonic under Ferentino's exotic notes. Cars swerve. Strings are plucked, as derelict children converse in blissful ignorance. Neon lights burn farther down the forlorn lane, as seedy citizens spring from alleys, peddling their vials of doom. The sounds here are rain-swept and temptation-wrought, represented by more maddened vocals that reference a strange party, the weight of weird, porn-torn loneliness and the threat that anything and everything can and will kill you, strung by a country-western vibe that's foreshadowed by a Van Cleave piano, Asian chimes and ultimately an incensed, guitar rift. Throughout it all, one desires an about-face, but the nocturnal peril glues one's soles into place. 

In the fourth and fifth tracks, the streets are underscored by a New Wave, quixotic quest, flavored by an invading, foreign dictation and an audio-book sampling of The Iliad, with all the vain (public-domain) adventure one could hope to gain. One's burdened, platform heels now lift, clicking to a deadly drumroll, but which direction should one take? Though the music uplifts, a Texas Ranger lies in ardent wait. 

The sixth track continues the judicious threat, crashing hard with squishing industrialization. Its structure soon slips from a mocking, Mae West refrain into a self-help gal's gullet. Bells batter one's brain, halting any chance for sleep. Should one remain out in the open or crawl beneath? The need to buy a fix, to grow numb with "another one of these," seems the only ineffectual solution.

Track seven rolls forth with a child's starry-eyed naivety, but the transmuting harshness is hard to overtake. The world, through Ferentino's anguished utterances, creates a repetitive, outward asylum, an anchoring, hellish haven better suited to a downtrodden dog or warbling, alley cat.

In tracks eight and nine, the buildup is subtle, but at least the combination dials inner strength. The steamy groove is Miami Vice, or any 1980s trek into the night. However, as one presses on, one's misguided zest for alteration dangles (along with one's pride), fading like a dying signal: not such a bad thing, for in its completeness, the platformed fever has cooled, reminding one that sometimes it's better to travel light than be hardened like concrete. 

Concrete Platform Shoes offers unimpeded, urban psychedelia. It captures all the rarified constructions one would expect from Ferentino, but it also stands as an isolated, transcendental hike into sobering humility. 

Slip on Ferentino's shoes at

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mzlDAWR9yqkH65bRm_fCAhgD3AHCbP-MA

BEDTIME FOR ROBOTS' 24: ANDROMEDA VOMIT

Michael Ferentino/Bedtime for Robots' 24: Andromeda Vomit mounts an ambient landscape, a livelong-day, alien journey into darkness where weird lifeforms (and around-the-bend threats) creep. 

I realize that Bedtime for Robots has touched upon this concept before (at least through my personal, listening vantage), but Andromeda Vomit is a thicker extension of the motif and works much as a short story would when inflated into a novel or feature-length film. Andromeda Vomit's particular themes, segues and audio seeds are extrapolated to full capacity, pushing insinuated terrors to levels previously unexplored. 

The first four tracks develop an eerie, precursory thread. Through these segments, I envisioned a craft landing on a "heavenly" body somewhere in the NGC 224 Galaxy, followed by the reveal of a sprawling, craggy stretch, as an intrepid band treks under an ineffable sky. There's trepidation binding the voyeuristic intent. It's not yet an utter regurgitation of horror, but it's getting there. 

Tracks 5-7 come closer to a sentinel cognition. The mechanized beeps and warbles discern a presence, perhaps a specimen torn from the palettes of Giger or Blaisdell, or maybe it's something more abstract, like Kubrick/Clark's looming monoliths, but cursed to the Galaxy of Terror core. To perpetuate the foreboding feel, Ferentino's notes prompt an uncanny balance of desire and dread. (Track #7, in particular, brings on a devouring chill, its entrancing vibration reminiscent of the creaking windmill from Once Upon a Time in the West.)  

Tracks 8-10 enter full-blown tribulation. It doesn't matter what one's imagination conjures through this phase, for the sounds remain constant and admonitory. One has reached a point of no return: far from one's vessel and nearer the inevitable beast.  

If one is attentive, one will hear the creature's wails, with other daunting entities chiming in, all designed for attack. The regurgitation now flows, sliding under one's soles, squeezing through one's gear. One has overstepped one's bounds, the results manifesting in ways that invoke Forbidden Planet, The Wizard of Mars, This Island Earth and that mind-anchoring staple, Solaris: cosmic voyages marked by varying, unrectifiable climaxes. The mission will be aborted, but within Ferentino's fateful au revoir, the palatable residue oozes on.

I re-listened to Adromeda Vomit while composing a speculative tale, one meant to stage hesitation and risk. Ferentino's composition did the mood-setting trick, and for that inspiration, I owe him my undying thanks. In my estimation, 24: Andromeda Vomit is one of Bedtime for Robots' best-spun ventures, and I do believe when you listen to it (no matter your visionary inclination), you'll believe so, too. 

Probe the landscape at  

https://mistlabel.bandcamp.com/album/24-andromeda-vomit?fbclid=IwY2xjawE923lleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHcjOFqiEBA48Pb_ZDe0q9c6h3iH94ss5AT71utxsm_YqQDcuziHxwTCUWg_aem_fVCcPrawz9fHxzDZXcD5ww

BEDTIME FOR ROBOTS: CHLOROFORM DAYS

Michael Ferentino's Bedtime for Robots sails toward a happier, stranger time, with the eight-track opus, Chloroform Days (a special release from The Church of the Noisy Goat). Its audio elements are occasionally grim, but with the retro ability (done in a Tangerine Dream stream) to instill the mind with mollifying fancies of any kind. (The following constitutes my individualized interpretations, based on the tracks' titles and their ensuing sounds.) 

"Corpse of Valerie" begins the epic with a stroke of abandonment. Its pace is careful and shrewd, reminiscent of the attic where (if I may be so bold) Catherine Deneuve has added another among her many corpses. In this respect, the track's creeping notes represent the wavering brainwaves of her undead ensemble, welcoming their fledgling member to their interminable catatonia.

"Epicurean Asshole" is comparably ominous, symbolizing (from my surreptitious vantage) a callous clod devoid of soulful belief. A shuffling cockiness gives this one its kick, airing an arrogance that invokes immorality. It's the perfect theme for the perfect villain. 

"Violent Violet" elects that villain's quarrelsome concubine, in a composition that vocalizes a self-deprecating but rebellious squeal. It's delivered through a male's voice, but in its taunting, la-la refrain (and mind-shifting game), it's female through and through (and of course, most un-ladylike, at that). 

"Community of Delicate Unity" is a totalitarian pledge disguised with peacenik decorations, a track that could be used as a backdrop for Terry Gilliam's Brazil, as it rolls with a monitor-queued assembly line that alas, culminates in blabbering lobotomization.  

For me, "Vicious Turd" strikes an underlying,  Phantom of the Paradise disposition, an electrical dejection that's as therapeutic as it's forbidding. Its organ-pressed build-up, draped by a mask and cloak, reeks of artistic revenge.

"Surrealistic Humanism" bangs like popcorn under a fire. It may bud from flesh and blood, but its underside is a wiring that sings the body electric, albeit to the beat of a discontent, music box.

"Chloroform Days," is the emblazoned, titular selection that spurts disinfectant like a choo choo train fueled by testosterone fished from Prince. It's hard to say how far its seraphic purgation (not to mention its tribal prance) will go; it could be either good or bad, depending on one's mood. (This composition is particularly impetuous, as its vocals seem to seduce and reduce one into an equivocal, comatose state that somehow manages to keep one wide-awake.)

"Disturbed Club of Self-Righteous Flunkies" is where the pompous pieces land. It functions by a stop-and-go progression, pausing only to subside and then go again. However, once it steadies, it keeps a gentle, Zen-like flow, though woven by enough unpaid promises to plug a bottomless pit.  

Chloroform Days, like any Bedtime for Robots experiment, is open to personal (re)design. Nevertheless, its sedatives are potent (and quite open), guaranteeing fresh explorations each and every time. 

Get nice and numb at

https://thechurchofnoisygoat.bandcamp.com/album/chloroform-days