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" LEECHhead is a project of the man behind 0 (reviewed here) as well as many other obscure and unknown projects. This tape is in a way not a real release in itself, but a promotional tape for his newest project, the label "Falling to Pieces." You might not be able to obtain this tape, but you can find sound snippets of it, and they should serve as a good sample of what to expect from the label itself.

Shortly said, the promo is mostly built of songs performed with two gameboys, but they are packaged alongside some noisier and harsher experimentations. "Intro" stands for a bit grainy sid-chip notes with quite a bit of delay, and soon gets overtaken by grainy distortion that paves the way for "HAUNT." The song consists of ambient-esque layers of sound with some random sid-beats backing it up, but with occasional harsh and grainy noise-attacks taking over the soundscape every now and then, making the tune a rather difficult one to grasp despite its quality components. The third tune is quite a leap, since it's a pure sid chip-composition with two simple melodies being backed by a simple beat and a bass line. The track sounds like a simple arcade tune, and is actually pretty catchy. It ends to fading harsh noise, just to make it sound less out of place.

Side B starts with a low-pitch and distorted sid chip sound going about in some irregular patterns, and it ends up creating some pretty interesting sounds despite its simplisticity. The following tune is a less poppy and more beat-oriented equivalent to A3, and actually "Trashlovers" sounds better and more fitting on the tape than "... Falling to Pieces" due to its lower pitch and simpler and harder sound. A short burst of noise surfaces, but soon makes way for the last track "Broken." It is similar to "HAUNT" without the grit-bursts, meaning that it's a simple and pretty tasty dark ambient-tune composed with a sid chip. It has a nicely quiet and watery feel, which gives the promo a nice end. I could wonder what the constant high-pitch note that followed through the whole B-side in the background was, but it was a very minor bother.

This tape suffers from its soundscape being a tad too one-dimensional and lo-fi, as the compositions would benefit from a bit deeper and plumper sounds. Now the tape ends up sounding a bit too even when considering its stylistical variation and the possibilities it provides. The songs' short lenghts also force them to reveal their best in a time too short for them to create an approperiate build-up or a zenith. The promo sounds fun, for sure, but also too safe despite its experimentations. It doesn't rise to shine.

If the label's releases will follow the lines of this tape but will top its quality, they just might be worth checking out. I'll be finding this out pretty quickly as I have the label's first official release, an EP from Ghoulskool, waiting for a review.

7+ / 10 "
reviewed by M of DBL ( http://www.damned-by-light.com/reviews/329.html )

FtP Records
http://ftprecords.blogspot.com/