sound.delirium//reviews - Mr.Bungle California

    mr bungle California -
    is just life if you take it ironically and in short passages, the very essential ones. it has been one of the most wonderful and impressive things I have heard and still is, after one year from the moment I?ve got to knowing it. and the impressions always change - one day you find the one song just gorgeous, the other day you seem to notice something you?ve never heard before in the album.
    the first thoughts were: "this music passes me like a self-designed and self-sewed dress, I can put it on and live in it". a really intimate emotion. well, imagine one listening the whole time to different musics and finding something here and something there, the something that really corresponds to something one like. every time it was just a certain song, certain style and still very good, but sometimes not really enough.
    and suddenly it appears: a stylistic overreach, emotionally burning, musically obsessed and textually metaphorical, and not only the album as a whole, but every one song of it.
    it is like an essence, concentration and inspiration from the music of 40s till 00s, with extreme contemporaneity in text; both of them composed and written with a virtuoso irony. the genius feeling of word, rhythm, rhyme, melody and composition in both of them again. the bright fair of styles and origins of music. music styles craziness, I would say.
    they do really compose great!!! you constantly feel the complicated and multilayer structure of the song, it?s intrigue, it?s rhythm, regular or as uneven as the changing scenery and characters of the song and you can't help reacting it. and at the same time the album is, in my opinion, retro-like, nostalgic, old good rock?n?roll-like, but very-very modern and wild but if you do not know or do not like old music, you probably won't notice the retro side of it.

    here is what I wrote some days ago, when I was listening to california again:
     "you listen to it, like for the first time and every sound is extra and separate, every comes into its own ear
    all the structure of the songs, as if they were transparent
    it is all so sensible as if I were eating them, swallowing, smelling and touching at the same time
    every piece separately and one after another
    and it turns really on! it has the terrible drive!
    even the songs, which earlier seemed to drag not so much attention to themselves
    why is it like that with me? probably because of masterly eclecticism, which seems to be perfectly created exactly for me; which corresponds to all of my seeks, addictions and tastes.
    and to all of those added, such an irony in the text, soft or sharp.
    well, I think I?m getting high from it!!!"

    in different songs you can meet a furious mixture with, for example, sudden latino influence, rocky guitar, punky-hardcore guitar, elvis vocals, jazzy and bluesy vocals, some strange computer effected vocals, lovely melodies and heavy attacks, hot mexican guys mixed with kusturica-like gipsy guys, "musical"-like composition and change of a music theme 10 times a song and do not trust anything (mean: music) except the words
    it is not music, it is performance!!

    some of the songs:

    none of them knew they were robots
    can you name me just any definition of this style??? it is an overlay of ten these and ten those, with a major image of a 40s swinging jazz american orchestra constantly interrupted by all kinds of things you can imagine!! it is a pure dance song. drive and move your body song. swing it.
    and at the same time, as well as golem II vapour boy and the holy filament, it is surprisingly serious and realistic. even sad. just hear it.

    retrovertigo
    the classic rock ballad composed with a good deal of finest taste and style. tender melody, underlined by regular aaaaaaaaaa and aaaaaiiiiiiii here and there, dramatic guitar crash in the culmination and important drums at the final. but do hear the sarcastically sweet voice and even if you do not know a word in English, you can guess the fun-making side of this beautiful piece. and as soon you get it, you?ll see that all the parts: melody, guitar and drums - are exaggerated, which makes a playing-with-a-listener effect, peculiar to all songs.
    but you can?t help being charmed by this song.
    do hear the lyrics

    ars moriendi
    here is where the wild people are!!!! spanish-mexican dish, richly spiced by south european gipsy-like instruments and voices! and then - rock it!
    crazy gypsies with slightly brutal rockers. isn?t it too hot???? chilli

     "all your bones are laughing
    as you?re dancing on my grave"

    !!!

    pink cigarette
    my first and ever beloved song. as always: do not trust the music. fall in love with it?s sensibility and tenderness of a love serenade and then smile and admire the deeply sarcastic lyrics.
    the wildly laughing, crying and screaming souls living the song are just marvelous!!!!!
    sophisticated!

    vanity fair
    is genius.
    emotional, provoking and metaphorical to the such extend, that I can still not be sure, what exactly do they mean? but in any case, it is a men-song and I likely will not ever understand it
    tell me if you can

    goodbye sober day
    get ready - it is the final!!! the story, the rock opera, the musical, the fight. a psychological performance with special effects - whether you pass it without losing you mind?
    explosion and revolt at the end.
    and you, feel yourself in the middle of a nightmare