Look, I’ve listened to a lot of electronic music in my day. In fact, not so long ago I absolutely refused to listen to any music that didn’t have a synthesizer in it. Analog, preferably, but these days that’s asking for a bit much. My point is, I’ve heard a lot of electronic music. I’ve talked about it for countless hours, danced to it, sang to it, stayed up all night listening to it, watched my friends make it, loved to it, cried to and over it, spaced out to it, once nearly had a heart attack to it. It’s my thing, okay? I love it. So I get personally offended when someone makes a bad electronic record, especially when they are receiving a bunch of undeserved hype and praise for said record.

I first heard about the Norwegian band 120 Days a few months ago from some online music writer/idiot (a breed that Superstarcastic doesn’t support) who claimed they were the next big thing, heavily influenced by Kraftwerk and prone to onstage synthesizer jams lasting 10+ minutes. Not having actually heard a song of theirs yet, I was pretty interested (even if it appeared that their name was a sly reference to the Marquis de Sade book 120 Days of Sodom, which is pretentious and presumptious as hell). The album was finally released, and I got my hands on it pretty quickly. It was around this time that I started to shake my fists angrily at the heavens and cursing myself for even hoping this band would be impressive. About 95% of the recent electronic albums I’ve heard have been total crap, but that’s another article altogether.

First of all, just because some retard goes out and buys a digital synthesizer with the Christmas money his grandmother gave him doesn’t mean he is going to sound anything like Kraftwerk. In fact, no one sounds like Kraftwerk, except Kraftwerk. Kraftwerk is awesome because they did something original. Like I really need to explain that to you people. You know. I’m just reiterating it because it’s so fucking ridiculous that someone actually likened this band to Kraftwerk. That’s like saying !!! sounds like Kraftwerk. Disgusting.

What this band actually sounds like is an electronic pyschedelic jam band that bred with tired emo-esque vocals and spawned the ultimate blasphemic lovechild. I don’t even think ‘blasphemic’ is a word, but who cares. It’s Phish with synths, featuring Conor Oberst on vocals. Except Conor actually wrote some decent lyrics before he hit puberty, whereas this is just trash. Maybe I’m being overly harsh, but I was expecting so MUCH. Why can’t someone make another Power, Corruption and Lies? Is demanding that sort of quality asking for so much?

To be fair, the music isn’t bad, really, even if they rip off everyone from Kraftwerk to The Cure (and pretty much every other band I respect). The melodies and instruments and everything are fine, although there is nothing new or exciting going on at all. Just your run of the mill electro-guitar dance band stuff that we’ve all been subject to for the past few years that makes me want to rip my eyeballs out at the roots and stuff them into my ears. It’s the vocals that kill me. Cliche, angsty rambling from a bored and/or high trust-fund baby, to put it nicely.

If you love electronic music and have any respect for it, just pretend this record doesn’t exist. Everything’s going to be okay.

Release Date: October 10, 2006
Label: Vice (America)/Smalltown Supersound (Norway)

Rating: 4/10

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