5ingles

Andrew Bernstein
"Unnatural Music for Cassette, Side A"

John Wiese

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More About

• Andrew Bernstein
• John Wiese
• Gucci Gucci
• Brain and Nerve Health
• Parkinson's Disease

This single aching throb falls somewhere between back-massager dull and dental-drill whine, droning and rumbling unevenly for what feels like the briefest quarter-hour ever.

So I can't decide whether turning the pricey fashions you deplore into a sing-songy taunt to promote your Left Eye couture/gimmicky rap career is hypocritical, cynical, canny, or some combination of the three. Anyway, this song is a senior-level American Studies seminar fist-fight waiting to happen.

Sort of like listening to a recording of Native Americans performing a cleansing chant on the ground floor of some mammoth industrial facility, but the person with the tape machines was several stories up and leaning over via a large open area shared by all floors. Not really representative of this duo's Swiss-watch precision, avant synth-pop; more of a tangential amuse bouche, really, an interlude.

Minus: that anyone's around to think about it puts the lie to the provocative, deeply oxymoronic title. Plus: You can cue up Wiese's manicured cascade of shattering dishware to forestall or represent physical violence as an apex of domestic argumentation, regardless of what types of sex make sense to you.

"If your regular acupuncturist appeared to be suffering from advanced Parkinson's disease and delirium tremens, would you acquiesce to treatment or proffer a fake emergency and reschedule?" "What does that even mean?"