Scattered Order - Planet Scrape

Scattered Order

Planet Scrape
self-released; 2013

4.1 out of 5

By Jamie Funk

Scattered Order is all about groovy and engaging electronic music. Their brand new album Planet Scrape is centered around appealing elements of glitch, minimal and noise, all thrown into a wild, rhythm oriented alternative rock. The opener "Uname" is a perfect intro for the feel of this kind of album, creating the tension - and release effect - of a tribal dance, but with the cold and dark feel of distortion and noise that you can find all over the track. 

“Ticker” brings the tension down a notch, but the dark atmospherics are stronger, almost bringing the direction of this album towards a trip-hop direction (think British pioneers of the genres the likes of the celebrated duo Massive Attack). Fastbuzz Tanks and Happy Sampling bring in a new intensity of lo-fi distortion, with degraded beats and crazy delay saturation, and manage to create really cool, fast-paced grooves, almost reaching Industrial territories. Halfway through the record, the cold, electronic and dark vibes start to showcase hints of melodies, with the interesting synth patterns of "Barbara Cartland in Twisted Fabric of Time,” which almost feels like an experimental pastiche, a well calibrated interlude before getting back to the harsh electronic noise and sharp beats with “Anti Freeze” and “Full Metal Rubic.” There’s a little tension-breaker with "Slow to Steady Mr. Tortoise,” then back to the tribal feeling with "Thrill Of It All,” with its sustained rhythm bringing this album to a full circle.

Scattered Order is a really interesting project based more on the rhythm and the texture of their sounds than on the melodies and song structure. Listening to the whole record in a playlist, as it is probably meant to be listened to in the first place, gives the idea that the band strived to deliver a freeform set of songs, but they were definitely aware of what to do to achieve this, as opposed to just tweaking some knobs and seeing what happened. It’s a well-organized chaos!

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