steering clear of the mainstream
since 2001

june 2010

REVIEW
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Gigantic Blonde Boy

"Golden Real Magic / World Independence" CD

Darbolistic Rex

Genre: more goofus than gallant, but fun all the same

June 2010

I've been noticing this sort of lo-fi collection of experimental, pseudo-pop ephemera popping up a bunch lately, and it's a titillatingly grab-bag approach to making and distributing music, even if it churns out a somewhat unsatisfying (or, at best, uneven) finished product more often than not. The style reminds me significantly of the music of the 80s/90s hometaper scene, in that the pieces sound like conceptual fragments, experiments designed to test the waters of sound creation itself. Gigantic Blonde Boy will jump from a synth-riffed "Got Love, Will Travel" knock-off to a mangled soundbox melody to avant-tape squalor to acoustic anti-folk with the air of careless impulse, as if that's just how things were meant to be done, and there's no real reason to bat an eye at the matter.

Admittedly, this Gigantic Blonde Boy is hardly invulnerable to the trappings of the manic hometaper approach, namely that many experiment don't pan out, and that the tape can't really be seen as a cohesive set of songs, but rather as a variegated tapestry of unrelated ideas. It simply comes with the territory. Still, although none of these casual noodlings ascends towards brilliance, the listener's joy derives from poring through the fragments and isolating unpredictable, winsome little tidbits amid the ephemera. Given ample determination, there's bound to be a little something for any adventurous cochlea.

Note: Also available freely in digital form here.

gigantic blonde boy's myspace

GBB live:

Michael Tau

[Vitals: 15 tracks, distributed by the label, released 2010]