Review
Feverdreams
Words and Music

Fitual (2007) Tohm

Feverdreams – Words and Music cover artwork
Feverdreams – Words and Music — Fitual, 2007

From what I understand, Feverdreams is a solo project. The press sheet lauds the album, Words and Music, for its mysterious soundscapes and noisy drone. However, I found something quite different. The "soundscapes" - I'm still not sure they are mysterious. I hardly heard the "drone." A little confused by this, I decided to empty my head of the press sheet's praise and listened to Words and Music with an inquisitive ear.

The song, "Words and Music by Albert Camus," begins with sounds from a distorted and distant sitar, which creates a really cool effect. Some weird delayed vocals are thrown on top of this; they sound like a snake slowly hissing which only interested me even more. After going berserk with some guitar shredding, the song stops completely and mellows out to a soothing ambient section. It's definitely the best track on Words and Music.

"Crawling Back In" swells from quiet to overbearingly loud, then changes into sections of recorded sounds and clips of people talking faintly. "Terminal" slow and uninteresting, and "Blue Eyes" is exceedingly eerie; high-pitched sounds that remind me of a swarm of bugs in the summer overtake the track, fading in and out. A lot of the other tracks ("Dosesque," "Thanksgiving (ala "7:00 News" by s&g)," "Implode," and "Stale") are really uneventful and hardly worth mentioning. The album ends with "Algernon Knew," a song that, underneath all of the annoying voices, almost sounds like it could be Boris.

I didn't completely agree with what the press sheet told me, but I do consider Feverdreams an experimental noise act. Words and Music is not easy to listen to because it's not very interesting. The tracks are slow moving and sporadic; periods of silence appear in almost every song and random sound clips are tossed in at any given time. The sound clips were always really quiet, which annoyed me. I couldn't figure out the reason behind using these different clips of people talking, because they were almost inaudible. If you're going to use this technique, let the listener hear them! Even giving Feverdreams a fair chance, I couldn't help but lose my patience and want to skip tracks.

4.0 / 10Tohm • June 19, 2008

Feverdreams – Words and Music cover artwork
Feverdreams – Words and Music — Fitual, 2007

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