Jason Bieler And The Baron Von Bielski Orchestra – Postcards From The Asylum
Jason Bieler And The Baron Von Bielski Orchestra – Postcards From The Asylum
Baron Von Bielski Records
Release Date: 28/07/23
Running Time: 60:12
Review by Dark Juan
8/10
Good morning. Yes, I am writing this before the midday sun, mainly because I am operating on three and a half hour’s sleep and His Tiny Satanic Majesty Mossy Boggart Grimshaw Cravensworth III has finally crashed out after his walk and is no longer attacking my feet, the loofah or Hodgson Biological-Warfare, who has taken to wandering around with a permanently hurt expression on his face although he is currently flaked out on the sofa emanating the kind of poisonous funk that a dictator would give at least one totalitarian testicle for. It is difficult to write when your brain has devolved to a useless lump of grey cheese, but at least I can get away with murder while Editor-in-Extremis Simon “None More” Black is safely away in Mexico with not much internet and a shit load of tropical storms to deal with – so here’s me going full bore rude and obnoxious while he is not around.
*CENSORED FOR READER SAFETY*
Goddamn, that felt good.
So, this time upon the rapidly rotating Platter Of Splatter™, we have the latest offering from Jason Bieler And The Baron Von Bielski Orchestra, and the first thing that strikes me as I read the blurb is that Jason has a disturbingly similar sense of humour to Dark Juan, and finds weird shit funny. I offer you this quote from the PR company:
“On “Postcards From The Asylum”: when aggressively prodded for comment The Baron says…”Well, Art is Art, isn’t it? Still, on the other hand, water is water. And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. Now you tell me what you know.”
You know what? The man is fucking RIGHT and we should all bow to his obviously superior wisdom. Let’s see whether this sage for the modern age’s music is up to the intellectual level of his repartee…
It’s clearly obvious that Jason Bieler has no desire to pigeonhole himself into a single genre when you listen to “Postcards From The Asylum”. It’s a massively diverse set of songs. Opening cut ‘Bombay’ has a decidedly Emo bent going on with hooks so large you could land a fucking megalodon with ease with them. He also has a very pleasing clean voice that doesn’t have any pretension about it. There’s no forced growling or gravel. He does sing at a surprisingly high pitch for a man that has a face carved out of solid rock, though. Honestly, the man is that craggy there are sherpas leading expeditions to his forehead. He also looks like he wants to cut your ears off and wear them as an accoutrement.
‘Numb’ is a real step change, going from Emo-based hooks and Pop-Punkiness to being all Proggy and syncopated, with some truly amazing phrasing throughout the song and loads of top-notch fretboard wankery in the background. The record changes pace again on the third tune, ‘Heathens’ which is a truly sleazy Hard Rock record that is seriously and openly checking out the arse of your girlfriend WHILE YOU ARE STOOD TALKING TO IT, while it grins knowingly as you realise you need to give it a taste of a good, old-fashioned straightener on the cobbles or your missus ain’t coming home tonight.
‘Mexico’ is a fucking ballad. Dark Juan’s opinion of ballads is well known, but for you new readers – Dark Juan considers ballads from Rock and Metal artists to be cheap-arsed cash ins for a quick hit single and lots of girls chucking their underwear at the vocalist while hairy fat blokes cause chaos with sprinkler systems by waving lighters about. ‘Mexico’ just about passes muster, though, considering it’s a heartfelt ballad about getting utterly fucked up on party treats and shagging, and Dark Juan has to admit that it has an absolutely fucking BANGING piano line and a chorus that massive it has precipitated landslides in the Pennines just outside of Sowerby Bridge, thereby preventing those dastardly Lancastrians from gaining access to God’s own county, the People’s Republic of West Yorkshire. ‘Birds Of Prey’ is a power ballad. Yuck. The urge to dig out my own eyes with a rusty spoon is strong right now.
Now Bieler appears to have got his lighter-waving pretensions of the way (he really doesn’t have the hair for it anyway and he’d look fucking TERRIFYING in spandex) ‘Flying Monkeys’ goes completely apeshit and starts emulating Mr. Bungle having naughty and intimate relations with Primus with a bit of King’s X thrown into the mix as well. And ‘Sic Riff’ has a… a… sick riff, man, which references various Devin Townsend projects and classic Hard Rock in the middle eight to this reviewer’s ear.
To summarise, then, this album is eclecticism taken to wholly shocking extremes. Everything from classic Metal sounds to bouncy Funk to spasmodic Punk to slouchy Grunge to Electropop to Southern Gothic is thrown into a giant musical mixer and this album is the result. And at the front of it all, clad in a sequined ringmaster’s outfit, grinning maniacally and twirling his baton as he marches around his own disturbing musical circus terrorizing his audience. Dark Juan had put off listening to this album for quite a long time because it was a Wild Card choice assigned to me, and Dark Juan is now ashamed because he rather quite enjoyed this album of whateverthefuckitis. It reminds me quite a lot of Coheed And Cambria frontman Claudio Sanchez’s side project, The Prize Fighter Inferno, which shared the same utter, joyously unconcerned disregard for any sense of musical conformism. Even with the FUCKING POWER BALLAD! Helpfully, Jason Bieler has given us a description of the music he has created, if you’ll indulge me…
“Nordic Ambient Post-Classical Satanic Love Songs for Nomadic Peoples Living Above the Arctic Circle catering specifically for those who staff Musk Oxen Rescues and wear hemp-based sweaters.”
Excellent.
The Patented Dark Juan Blood Splat Rating System awards Jason Bieler (the mad, MAD bastard) 8/10 for an album of fragmented genius with a couple of missteps (‘Sweet Eliza’ is just a dull love song with no real uniqueness, for example) which absolutely charmed Dark Juan with its diverse mix of influences that somehow worked.
TRACKLISTING:
01. Bombay
02. Numb
03. Heathens
04. Mexico
05. Birds Of Prey
06. Flying Monkeys
07. Sic Riff
08. The Depths
09. Beneath The Waves
10. Sweet Eliza
11. 9981 Dark
12. Feels Just Like Love
13. Bear Sedatives
14. Deep Blue
15. Human Head
LINE-UP:
Jason Bieler (who does basically does everything anyway) and a load of guests, who are listed below for your convenience:
Andee Blacksugar (Blondie, KMFDM, Peter Murphy)
Marco Minnemann (The Aristocrats)
Todd “Dammit” Kerns (Slash & The Conspirators, Toque)
Edu Cominato (Geoff Tate, Soto)
Ryo Okumoto (Spock’s Beard, Progject)
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.
