Mr. Brubaker's Strawberry Alarm Clock

You can't help but be overwhelmed by Riz Maslen's Neotropic productions. Maslen piles sounds atop sounds with glee that borders on ruthlessness. Her frayed B-boy breakbeats sizzle and squirm beneath samples laid thick enough to suffocate. Standing in marked, almost anachronistic contrast to the minimalist modes favoured by late-'90s electronica, the dizzying density of MR. BRUBAKERS STRAWBERRY ALARM CLOCK leaves you gasping and reeling.
After dosing your cotton candy with hallucinogens and spinning you through the title track's 10-plus disorienting minutes, Maslen drops all pretenses of politeness. She maroons you in a funhouse-mirror milieu ("Ultra Freaky Orange") and leaves you to wend your way through the album's vivid, psychedelic tableau. It's all too easy to get lost in Maslen's fantastic musical maze. Sticky synths, odd clanks and whirs, discomposed exotica, film noir, funk, and John Barry-isms, angelic cooing, and outrageous stereo-(tre)panning effects compound the cacophony. Voices jeer ("Gutted") and tempt ("Vacetious Blooms"). Visions splinter into frenzied figments ("Beached", "Vent", "Apple Sauce") and fugues ("Saucer Song", "Sideshow Man"), finally giving way to flights of deathcap delirium ("Cremation", "You're Grinding Me Down"). Surreal sounds assail the senses, suggesting the saints-and-sinners imagery of such film fare as THE TRIP, EASY RIDER, and THE HOLY MOUNTAIN.|