CD, Marvellous Tone, 2007
www.myspace.com/marvelloustone
Dino Felipe hasn’t been sleeping much, as the title of this album suggests. In fact he’s been quite occupied over the past few years with several releases for an assortment of electronic music labels including Sublight, Melted Mailbox, Schematic, Rolax, Clinical Archives, and now this eccentrically playful CD-R release for Portugal’s Marvellous Tone.
As a personal experiment in sleep deprivation, one can only imagine the results this aural tribulation might produce. From the moment the album embarks, the answer becomes all too apparent as the listener is introduced to the madcap confines of Dino Felipe’s unfortunate experiment. Right from the opener “Intro To Bed”, Dino makes it perfectly clear that he is going to take you somewhere where you have never been before, and makes no promises that you’ll return in the same mental state in which you departed. Odd tones greet indiscriminate guitar strumming as Dino sings his virtually indecipherable expressions masked by filtered vocal effects that pan and weave throughout the mix. Next, brief explosive resonance and bouts of cringing static open “Asleep For Three Days”, leading into grumbling vocal rants, intentionally out-of-tune instrumentation, heaving envelopes of diverse sound visitations, and headache-inducing squelches of noise. “Lucid in Janet’s Planet” can barely pass as a cover to Janet Jackson’s “Control”, as a dirty rhythm drives the sickly clicks and off-beat basslines, while Dino whines out the lyrics to this interminable mainstream atrocity. “Run From The Moons” spits out a steady stream of stuttering noise, repeatedly interrupted by a hail of random drones and skipping clicks. Varying degrees of static and clamor drive the album’s lengthy closer “I Can’t Count (On) Sheep” while windy ambiance pervade the gaps left by the haphazard interjections of fleeting glitch, bizarre clanks, and sloppy wet bubbling din, all under the spell of Dino’s arbitrary knob twiddling.
Is there a method to all this madness? Only Dino knows, so don’t bother attempting to decipher this outlandish hodgepodge of misfit electronic doodling. It’s not supposed to make sense; just sit back and take it all in – you’ll sleep better that way.
[4/10]
— Paul Nielsen