cyberpunk

Chilled out Chiba City Nights, full of neon gas, and barely room to pass. Life as a blur. Does not really bring Neuromancer to mind immediately, and if it hadn't been mentioned as part of the inspiration, I do not think it would have come to mind. And I am still fond of that, out of all of Gibson's works I've read, my favourite by far. Sprawlpride is more like it. Harder and more technological in feel, like there really is a chip in the head. Personally, I love the idea. Think of all the books I could download. More than I do now, and I'm on about a hundred a year average, in the old fashioned linear mode. Could be more boring being binary though. Like braille. Having said that, there is nothing like having a real book in your hands, turning pages and so on. And, there is more time to ruminate on the data input, gives it more of a chance of developing through the semiotic chain to wisdom, assuming that it's for more than mere entertainment.

Orbiting Freeside, obviously sends us out into space place. Real or virtual, it doesn't really matter, it amounts to the same thing synaptically. Now we return to the laid-back pace of the first track. Electro-lounge style. Nice enough progression, nothing startling, but enough to maintain interest. The Pink Ribbon Club, picks up the pace quite drastically and begins pumping the data in at a fairly rapid rate. Sounds like my kind of place when I had the energy, nowadays the young ones seem to need more chemicals to do what should come naturally, or am I really showing my age now?) Tired and listless, all wistful and misted.

Again, with The Pink Ribbon Lounge, we are back to the slow pace of the chill-out room. The interval between bursts of adrenalin or amphetamines/narcotics. To be honest, it all feels fairly clean cut. There is a pattern of pace forming, wherein the next track should be more upbeat. We will see. Again, nicely constructed without becoming dull. Sure enough Metropolitan Orgy is more upbeat. It is difficult to place this all with any sort of sense of consistency. It purports to be cyberpunk, and it has that element in places but overall, it seems like it is slightly confused about what it wants to be. That may be the whole point however, though I'm probably granting more benefit to the proverbial doubt there.

Then comes, Ill Defined String Conversion. Expectedly slower in pace, but retaining the cyber element wonderfully well. By far the best track of the album up to this point, in my view. Love the sound of it and the composure is quite assertive. Now looking at the genre 'soundtrack', I think is aspiring to something it isn't. Not to say it's bad, just misaligned. Tags, I'd say three and a half in places, but not particularly well fused or dramatically soundscaped to really carry it off completely. I think the material is here, but the 'chapters' seem to be from two or three different books, and leads to a slight mental confusion. That could easily just be me and my brain. I'm being a user here!-)

Anyway, the last two tracks are upon us. Lonesome Loser Blues, has the angle but does it walk the walk. It is actually a reasonable track, kind of echoes from the previous one a bit, but with a different perspective, in that it is introspective enough to be called blues, certainly has the lonesome feel about it. Sararimen's Lament, is again very likeable and retains the thread and sense of continuity that a soundtrack demands. So, not unsurprisingly since I wrote that it wasn't it has proved me wrong in a sense, in that it does gather itself together enough to be so, but only in the later tracks, up until then it is very up and down. Maybe a track rearrangement would sort that out, however it has been presented thus, so its judged as it comes. Overall, not bad.