Combinator – Re//Combinator EP
Combinator – Re//Combinator EP
Self-Released
Release Date: 17/06/22
Running Time: 25:25
Review by Dark Juan
6/10
This is getting ridiculous. Dark Juan is not an early riser, yet today I was up and out of bed before 7am. This is highly unacceptable. It is still midmorning and I have been up for hours! There is only so much tea one man can drink before his liver cries enough. How am I to get through the rest of the day? I’ll be asleep by 4pm and bored by half twelve! I should do something to entertain myself…
Oof. That’s better.
Today’s offering to the musical gods is by a gentleman named Sean Fairchild, who I am assuming is American, although he was born abroad and has lived in places as diverse as France and China, among others, and he’s one of those. You know, one of those annoying bastards who can play more than one instrument REALLY well, when you can’t even pick up a guitar without fucking it up beyond all repair? Yes, Sean can play the bass, keyboards and do drum machine shit and sequencing and programming and stuff. I am viridescent with envy. Positively green. However, it would be very difficult indeed to describe “Re//Combinator” as a metal release. It has certain roots in rock and metal, yes, but it is a rather more gentle and electronic affair. The closest it gets to metal is the fact that Sean Fairchild is a superb bassist in the same mould as Les Claypool and that his music has a strong progressive vibe, and it is very ambient. There’s elements of drum and bass, French pop music, little Eastern flourishes and the odd little hard edge, especially on the opening track, “Guest In Your Own Skin”, which starts in a very promising fashion, sounding almost like a Muse intro before going left-field and ambient, yet with egregiously technical bass. I also enjoyed the vocals, which are soaked in vocoder effects and spliced into the music rather than sung over it.
“Things That Should Be” is about as metal as it gets, a shuddering, nervous, complex song that starts with a technical, progressive rock intro and opening movement before popping in and out of a drum and bass and EDM flavoured section through the verses. This is underpinned by choppy, discordant bass throughout. This is by far the most aggressive song on the album and by far the most of interest to metal fans. If the rest of Sean’s output were like this, I’d be a rabid fan. It goes on for about a minute and a half too long, though.
In fact, I’d go as far as to say that Combinator remind me of a beastie composed of Pink Floyd, Air, Daft Punk and Primus – there’s the sweeping soundscapes and expansive songwriting that Floyd do so well, the quirkiness and idiosyncrasy of Air and their lithe and unusual dance-based pop, the funkiness and jollity of Nile Rodgers playing with Daft Punk and the sheer out to lunchedness of Primus. It’s all rather… amorphous, though.
I don’t find the music particularly inspiring to be honest. It beeps and squelches its way around an undefined, fuzzy middle ground, sounding rather like a Nine Inch Nails filler track in places (the second remix of “Respira” by Jesse Holt sounding especially like it belongs on the second disc of “The Fragile”) and curiously unsure of itself in others. The most complete track on the whole EP is the funk-blues hybrid called “Through The Fog” which apparently is a bonus remix, but has a killer bass hook and a superb vocal performance. It is this track that reminds us that Sean is actually a very good musician indeed.
Having a gripe about the record doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it, though. It’s good music and it would be very entertaining if you were in a quiet mood and wanted to listen to something that isn’t too challenging, but it really isn’t heavy metal in the same sense that other electronic bands like Master Boot Record and The Algorithm have managed to achieve, but it does occupy a unique musical niche. I like uniqueness. That has always been a quotient in my enjoyment of music.
ALTHOUGH – REMIXES! What is the fucking point of remixes? Let’s just release four different versions of the same bloody song!!! The punters are stupid enough to pay for it – just look how many people buy remixed classic albums even though they already own three copies of it! If we can do this on a song by song basis we’ll be quids in, chaps! They are needless and pointless and are nearly as bad as fucking ballads! I need to find someone to remix and chop up old Doomcrow songs in five different ways and then I will no longer be reliant on Mrs Dark Juan obtaining payments from dippy French hippy all-female dance companies who want animal brooches that somehow represent the women who dance – some wanted bears. I took this to mean they were bear-shaped people. I didn’t want to speculate about their body hair. Some wanted eagles, which I interpreted as them being predatory and noisy and disturbingly tough to get rid of when they have got their claws into you.
There was also a sperm whale…
I am somewhat conflicted, because I don’t mind some laid back grooves now and again, but I am writing for a metal site and I think the only people who would listen to Combinator are the most intrepid of proggy metal fans and there simply ain’t that many of them about, apart from Rory Bentley and his band of prog dads in Diceratops, representing the largest gathering of progsters outside of an HRH Prog gathering, where they can be safely corralled before they start corrupting the good folk of metal with “Brain Salad Surgery” and “YesSongs”…
The Patented Dark Juan Blood Splat Rating System can’t believe that it is still only 1130 in the morning and it is wrapping this review up. It awards Combinator 6/10 for an EP that is wispy and ethereal, yet curiously unsatisfying, and of very limited interest to the long haired family of noisy miscreants that are metalheads. Marks have been deducted for this, and for three remixes, two of the same song, one after the other which is frankly fucking unforgivable.
TRACKLISTING:
01. Guest In Your Own Skin
02. Things That Should Be
03. Hide and Seek
04. Cartoon Character Child
05. Respira (Jesse Holt Club Mix)
06. Respira (Jesse Holt Chill Mix)
07. Through the Fog (Chi:Child Mix) [BONUS]
LINE-UP:
Sean Fairchild – Bass, vocals, synths, programming
LINKS:
Disclaimer: This review is solely the property of ‘Dark Juan’ and Ever Metal. It is strictly forbidden to copy any part of this review, unless you have the strict permission of both parties. Failure to adhere to this will be treated as plagiarism and will be reported to the relevant authorities.
