Music reviews. CD reviews. Critically hip!

Let me attempt to break down this almost incoherent album into a few bite-sized pieces. I begin with just the CD – no album artwork and no background story. All I have is a round piece of plastic that makes noise when I but it into my computer. This first thing I hear is rain and then a track of wind chimes laid on top of it. This is pretty relaxing but then comes another track laid on top of all that with a piano and noises, which I cannot comprehend. I expect this to be the opening to a different kind of album yet after finishing the entire 40 minute CD, I learn that rain plus wind chimes plus other “music”, which I do not understand, makes up the entire album. So what does this mean?

I decided to read the liner notes about this piece of art. Schlarb apparently began this musical endeavor after a series of misfortunes. He lost his job and divorced his wife and felt like he was living almost like a ghost in his home without any contact from the outside world. On one particular day, many months later, he decided to set up a microphone and record a rainstorm from the street outside his apartment for 40 minutes. This became the “backbone” of his entire album. He soon found himself with the help of 40 collaborators and 4 years worth of work.

This all started to make a little more sense. Even though a tuba / drums / upright bass trio mixed with a rainstorm accompaniment is a little strange to my ear, I started to understand the concept of this album. Schlarb took a little piece of every great musican he met and put it all together in a way, which I do not believe anyone has ever done. His collaborators include Dave Longstreth (Dirty Projectors), Bhob Rainey (nmperign), John Ringhofer (Half-Handed Cloud), and much to my surprise, Sufjan Stevens, an artist I greatly admire. Schlarb combines underground jazz cymbals with Delta blues with progressive rock. It’s unlike anything else I’ve ever heard but also a combination of everything I have heard. And in a way, I’ve come to really appreciate this album.