When I first came across the artist Angry Muffin, I thought that, for sure, I was about to listen to some hard electro or dubstep; I mean, with a name like that, it seems like a pretty decent assumption, right? Wrong. What I got when I hit ‘play’ on his self-titled debut album was 7 tracks covering a variety of different styles that, as a whole, told an emotional rollercoaster of what felt like a deeply personal story. And when I say a variety of different styles, I’m not just talking about a mix of electro, trance, and house. Angry Muffin (both artist and album) challenges the more “ravey” nature of what we have popularized and deemed as EDM with a more emotive and less dance-driven form of electronica.
The album opens up with You Crushed Me, a track with a gritty, industrial vibe, and a haunting vocoded vocal that embodies the darkness of the track. Other tracks with equally heavy titles such as Human Slave and I Saw the Demon, also use vocoded vocals with sharp and powerful synths that almost make you sympathize with his pain. I Saw the Demon also has some rock’n’roll undertones, complete with a guitar solo towards the end of the track. My personal favourite on the album is Perfect Hearts, a collaboration with UK-based Firesnake and vocalist Victoria Gydov. It is an upbeat track with poppy retro synths that, for some reason, reminds me of Cyndi Lauper and Zack Morris. This and Flipped Out, another upbeat track on the album, do a good job of balancing the heaviness of the rest of the album and will probably be the only ones you will feel inclined to dance to.
Although the album doesn’t fit my personal tastes exactly, there is a clear sense of craftsmanship in the way the songs work together to tell a story of heartbreak, pain, and anguish. It is a gentle reminder that there is much more to electronic music than fist-pumping beats and bone crushing drops, and does a good job of giving the otherwise faceless Angry Muffin an identity.
To learn more about Angry Muffin, check out EDM TOR’s interview HERE and check out the album preview below.
Sarah Chiu – EDM TOR
