mothboy – the fears (ad noiseam)

mothboy is simon smerdon and so far he has played bass in metal and hardcore bands, with names such as scorn or horchata eventually after getting tired of intensive band-playing he starts to make music as mothboy. as i mentioned in previous review of kiritchenko’s release, ad noiseam are releasing many varied styles. one of them is the dark hop sound, presented by horchata for example. this time we meet mothboy’s dark hop sensibility again, despite being slightly lighter than his mate horchata’s album. his sound is somewhere between scorn’s deep bass and techno animal’s hip hop orientation, nevertheless mothboy gives a human touch and a little bit of “life” into his music by implementing live instrumentation. as he had described before he recorded this album, this is supposed to be his perfect album as mothboy with 50% live instrumentation and 50% electronics. probably he has succeeded in realising his vision. “the fears” merges hard bass and heavy sub basses combined into break rhythm whilst implementing live instruments into all that with long passages in-between. hard electronic hip hop flavoured with jazzy moments but subtly combined so that it can not be recognized. the live jazz recordings give a feeling of classic instrumental hip hop. metal voices are also included in long ambient tracks that bridge the gaps between the hardcore moments or have an introductory role in the songs. than hip hop vocals by mc akira the don can be found in “all the wrong places”, giving even a sharper hip hop dimension to the tracks. so this album is consisted of the style indicators which can also be found in ad noiseam’s sound interest and orientation. out of these two styles, experimental/ambiental and dark hop, i would rather choose his experimental/ambiental side, as well as the experimental ad noiseam side.