It’s Monday and Mondays suck, so let’s grind it out with the album premiere of The Sound That Ends Creation’s Memes, Dreams, and Flying Machines.
If chaos be thy name it is truly Chris Dearing and his senses frying mathgrind monster house that is The Sound That Ends Creation. It has only been eleven months since his last record, which this column also had the pleasure of premiering. But Dearing appears to have no desire to slow things down and has not only gotten more chaotic and experimental with his latest release.
We if the last record was the Twilight Zone (and it was), Memes, Dreams, and Flying Machines is like if David Lynch started directing. Horns and sax have been added to the mix for an even jazzier experience. I am waiting for this to unfold into a Tommy Dorsey goes mathgrind experience. This record verges on it.
“An Apple A Day, You’ll Die Anyway” opens the record with the full experience: guitar, keyboards, slamming drums, and eventually Dearing’s own frenzied vocals. The song flies in the face of everything in sight, bouncing off the walls, and slamming through every obstacle. It is a that carries an attitude like the fun’s just begun. The second track “Can I Be Aborted Even Though I’m 29?” keeps the momentum and even ratchets up the heaviness. A beatdown-like breakdown kicks in earlier on, and fully sung section towards the end that throws some sass at the listener. It is good to see this project back so soon.
An interesting aspect of this record is how Dearing continues to layer instruments on top of instruments, album to album, and is making records that are more varied. While that may seem obvious to some, to others explaining how the project keeps layering in sounds might seem like an idea to be hesitant about. Nevertheless, it is pulled off here to great effect. Tracks like “Whine Moms” are more straightforward in comparison to the rest of the record, or at least as much as one can get here. But other tracks like “Weddings Are Funerals With Cake” throw a blender of sounds into a blender of sounds into a blender of sounds. At once it is a mathgrind song, then it takes a kind of sci-fi twist with clean, droning vocals before suddenly morphing into a series of thick breakdowns.
More tracks like “Cover Me With Spiders And Gasoline, I’m In!” let the piano take the wheel for a moment that feels like demented lounge music. In “If the Spaghetti Monster Doesn't Exist, Why Do Planets Look Like Meatballs?” the track hovers around a little melody that, despite its simplicity, still manages to sound strange and whimsical.
It’s the final track, “King Douche On His Throne of Loneliness” that takes us out on a carousel that’s almost pleasant for the second half. But Dearing slowly starts to speed it up, adding effects and delays until its riders start to feel sick. It is maybe the most dizzying part of the record which is funny because it the most unsuspecting moment on the album.
There’s talk of a MySpace grind revival or at least the potential for one to exist. And while I would not put The Sound That Ends Creation into that category, it sounds like it is drawn from. Something like Destroyer, Destroyer would be an apt comparison, though with more of a Dissociation Dillinger Escape Plan approach. Memes, Dreams, and Flying Machines is another masterstroke in The Sound That Ends Creation’s library. The mixing and programming is awesome and I don’t know what sort of mad scientist brew is being consumed while writing this sort of music, but it is working. Get grinding on this! The Sound That Ends Creation Facebook | Bandcamp | Instagram Dark Trail Records Facebook | Bandcamp | Instagram | Twitter | Store I'm here, here, and here.
