miles regan - kilibisa

Miles Regan

Kilbisa
self-released; 2013

3.6 out of 5

By Sean Dennison

Miles Regan is an SAE (School of Audio Engineering) Institute of Technology graduate located in NY, NY. Most of this album, Kilbisa, was mixed through headphones and partly through his school's studio. It's unfocused but interesting and experimental both in nature and execution.

Rhythms and melodies exist within Kilbisa, but they wander in and out creative sound collages. And the collages themselves are constantly moving from interesting to boring territory so often that the whole album has a very undulating feel. Even so, the music uses repetition pretty liberally. This isn't a hard listen but a head-scratching one. There are times when I loved what I was hearing, others when I couldn't decide what Regan was going for. This album makes my thoughts, like the music, scattered so here they are:

"Raccoon Tales"- Juxtaposed, chopped up vocal samples, sounds heavily manipulated but I think it's just chopped very suddenly. It has a Euro pop vibe going on for it. Pretty cool introduction, it can't be said that Regan doesn’t    have good ideas.

"Too Much to See"- The soulful vocal sample-"What a day, what a day . . ." is magnified through periscopic echoes and blips over junky, tribalesque percussion to create a weirdly soothing track.

"insomnia"- A  pointless experiment that will make you mourn the minute and 16 seconds i listened to it, no sense of tension or control.

"Tell Me Down (Featuring Jacob Sternberg)"- The way the vocalist stresses the er in river is funny, sounds like the most realized effort, or at least the music is actually composed around something thanks to the human vocalist.

"Kin Kindly, Mostly Bloody Teeth"- Really good, white noise rhythms, screeching beats, has a very sinister, grinding Death Grips feel to it.

"No Sleep" starts out pleasantly enough, slowly but surely adding layers of inviting synth harmonies but then dips into much more unfocused noise, then comes back again with the same pleasant tinkling that dreamily leads the track offstage.

"Limb by Limb" is the coolest track by far. A bombastic burst of SNES-flavored beats and sound effects. The vocal samples are run together so tightly it gives the impression of one running the drumsticks down a xylophone.

"Part of the Problem" feels uninspired, boring sound bites, the trash taken out after "Limb by Limb."

Anyway, this EP is recommended and thanks to my avant-garde style of reviewing it track by track, you can trim the fat off the meat.

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