PINKUNOIZU - FREE TIME
Full Time Hobby

I’ve reviewed previous releases by Pinkunoizu before, and it’s a rather mixed bag of stuff. So I had no idea what I’d make of this new LP, the debut album from the band. Actually, that’s not true – as the album features three of the four tracks previously heard, I knew what to expect from some of it at least.

So I should refer you to my previous reviews of Time is Like a Melody, Everything is Broken or Stolen and Parabolic Delusions, none of which I’ve changed my mind about. As for the new stuff – Myriad Pyramid is a rather excellent slice of Sixties lounge fused with trippy psych and noise music, floaty, catchy, unsettling and discordant all at once; Cyborg Manifesto is possibly the first example of country electro that I’ve heard, and is every bit as off-kilter and intriguing as that might sound. It’s something that probably shouldn’t work, but with the twangy guitars, the ethereal vocals and the furiously fast but low-key backing rhythms, it’s rather good.

The final three tracks all move into the expanded workout world that the band didn’t convince me with on the Peep EP – The Abyss is a relatively brief six and a half minutes of laid back, spacey and fairly inconsequential stuff, entirely pleasant without being in any way remarkable, while the nine+ minute Death is Not a Lover and the eight and a half minute Somber Ground feel somewhat dragged out. Death is Not a Lover takes a minute and a half before it gets going, with a rhythmic, hypnotic feel that builds nicely until it suddenly grinds to a halt with three and a half minutes left to go. There’s some interesting sounds still ahead in the track, but like the worst multi-movement prog tunes, it tries to do too much and to be too smart arsed while doing it.

Somber Ground, similarly, builds nicely for the first half of the track before generally jumping the shark and becoming too much. It might work as a movie soundtrack – as a stand-alone music track, it’s less effective.

There are moments of very goodness in this album, but it’s wildly inconsistent. A little less self indulgence – or perhaps a full on assault of indulgence – would be a marked improvement. As it is, this feels like a pop band trapped by its own pretensions and I’d much prefer them if they stuck with the off-centre weird but infectious pop songs rather than experimenting with stuff that might have seemed innovative four decades ago but now feels like a bit of a cliché.

DAVID FLINT

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