The Illegal Wiretaps - He's Got Oedipus Rex Eyes

The Illegal Wiretaps


He's Got Oedipus Rex Eyes
self-released; 2013

4.0 out of 5

by Sean Dennison

I need to stop comparing artists to other artists. Have we really become a culture of comparisons, refusing to let artists stand on their own feet and instead putting on them the shoes of their predecessors? Anyway, I don't really have to this time around because The Illegal Wiretaps, the two-piece, out of whatever abstract dimension they're from straight up thank My Bloody Valentine and Wu-Tang Clan for this album (I was thinking the beats were more a throwback to J Dilla, but…crap! I'm doing it now.). Anyway it's got all the workings of those special albums you and you alone know exists: recorded in less than two days, in a bathroom, by human beings who almost certainly have smoked DMT. And this is supposed to be part of a 40-piece prolific-ness? What else have they been cooking up?

Going off that, does the rest of their discography sound the same? Psychedelic shoegaze, static beats, echoed vocals, android rantings, open eulogies to the genres hip-hop, ambient, glitch, and fast breaks. Cybernetic voices preaching modern platitudes, and some dude in the background going wild with the synthesizer. Sometimes it sounds dated, like this was the lost soundtrack to an even more deeply unknown 90s techno thriller. But those moments are few and far between. Is that clichéd? I can change it if you really want. "Mandrake" is the best track because of the following words: meditation, paranoia, beauty and ugliness. Maybe this won't change your life, maybe you've heard something like it before, but this lovely mess of desperate electronica is well worth your time as it was mine. If you need more persuasion, one of the tracks is called, "Elektra Wasn't That Complex; She Was Just a Pissed-Off Bitch.” How can you not love something like that?

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