Adventure - Adventure
Adventure is Baltimore resident Benny Boeldt, an active member of the super-cool and hyper-productive Wham City Arts Collective (other notable members of which include Dan Deacon, Ponytail, Blood Baby) and his self-titled debut album is released on Washington’s independent Carpark label.
Boeldt’s stock in trade seems to be electro, pretty much solely of the d.i.y. “produced in your bedroom” kind (at least, that’s how it sounds). Many of the eleven tracks feature moments of good, glitchy upbeat synth tuneage, opener ‘Loredo’, ‘Battle Cat’, ‘Ultra Zone’ and parts of ‘Jurassic Park City’ stand out in particular. The listener starts out thinking that this will be a pretty throwaway upbeat ride, with lots of synthesized fun along the way. Unfortunately, though, this kind of music works best when there are very definite, distinctive and catchy tunes to be enjoyed, and this just isn’t the case on more than half of the tracks here. Unremarkable and non-memorable lead melodies mean that ‘Civilization’, ‘Hyper Glow’, ‘Iron Stallion’ and ‘Wild Wild Ride’, for example, are pretty much unremarkable and non-memorable tracks in their entirety. Sitting here now writing this, in fact, I cannot bring any of them to mind, despite having listened through this album at least 8 to 10 times.
Another weakness is in the slightly uncertain / wobbly nature of some of the more obviously improvised bits, as found on most tracks. This kind of upbeat, impersonal electronic music needs, to my mind, to be executed with precision, and the slightly shambolic parts where Boeldt goes “off piste” just don’t sound right in this context. I found this to be particularly jarring in parts of ‘Loredo’, ‘Battle Cat’, ‘Wild Wild Ride’, ‘Crypt Castle Cult’ (the name a nod, perhaps, to Crystal Castles, with whom they are compared in the press release accompanying this release?) and ‘Jurassic Park City’.
The pace is also rather samey throughout the album. It is unstintingly upbeat, and a few more down-tempo moments would not have gone amiss to add a bit of needed light and shade.
In short, listening to this album is like listening to a (nearly totally instrumental, bar a few vocal samples on ‘Poison Diamonds’) collection of computer game soundtracks, circa 1995. Occasional echoes of other bands can be found (Human League, in ‘Travel Kid’; Slade’s ‘Cum On Feel The Noize’, I think, in ‘Jurassic Park City’), but chiefly it has more in common with Tetris, Sonic The Hedgehog and Mario. Fleetingly entertaining, but ultimately not the place to come if you are after lasting musical nourishment.