Comatone (aka producer Greg Seiler) and Foley (aka drummer Alon Ilsar) are two like-minded Sydney sound artists who have teamed up together to produce a work two years in the making. Trigger Happy sees the two butting heads and fusing together a work of machines pushed to their extremes inside insane time signatures and seemingly impossible to repeat beats.
The disc opens with “CF1,’ the winding up of harsh noise dropping into a light piano tinkle before a tricksy beat scuttles over deep throbbing bass. This may sound like familiar territory – same old IDM – but after a time the beat falls out to reveal a glistening sunrise of ambient mirrored tones. This floats along sweetly until an altogether new phrase of beats kicks in. All in the one track. And this continues in a really inventive way. The pair seem to be enjoying themselves so much and are so excited and overflowing with ideas that they want to fit as many of them as possible into the one track. “Prayer Bowl’ based around the tapping and droning and liquid lick noise of a single receptacle flickers and flutters along nicely. The elemental electro-rock fun of “Electric Sheep’ made me smile with its little robot voices and punked-out finale.
The album’ scope, the ideas and ambiguities stretch themselves out a fair way but never lose their inventiveness. Both Comatone and Foley appear, as I said, to be having serious fun with themselves. There’ a lot of love for the computers and the beat and these guys pull out almost everything to shape an album on the brink of enjoying itself a little too much. Always a good thing.
Joel Hedrick
