Descoberta gira do mês praí:

Menomena - I Am the Fun Blame Monster

Experimental/Muita coisa diferente

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There's hardly a bolder statement you could make about your band's penchant for innovation than writing software specifically to aid your own distinctive compositional style. This is what Brent Knopf did; his program is called Deeler, and it allows his band, Menomena, to improvise short ideas and use them as the building blocks for broad, loop-based compositions which they then learn to play live. The method borrows most obviously from hip-hop and glitch, and you can pick up slight traces of both in the band's sound, but this music is distinctly pop-oriented, and reasonably traditional where its core melodies are concerned.

Essentially, the band's process of building from small blocks enables them to put endless variations on each basic section of their songs-- introducing a pulsing organ and a plaintive piano separately, for instance, and then heaving them together in multiple combinations later in the song. Even the vocals are, by and large, just another module to be played with, disappearing for minutes at a time and reemerging with choruses just as you begin to grow accustomed to their absence.

Suffice to say, Menomena are a hugely creative band, and with I Am the Fun Blame Monster, they've managed to make an album that's extremely accessible yet entirely unconventional. The thing that drew me to the album in the first place was the crazy artwork, which features a flipbook of four photos and very little other information, save that the disc's title is an anagram for "the first Menomena album." It's just one more subtlety that exemplifies the depth of detail apparent on this record.

— Joe Tangari, October 21, 2003