I’m sure those who hear Interior Designs will trash it as nothing more than a child banging away on broken synthesizers. They’ll belittle “Extraordinary” for its host of fart noises and electronic cat calls. What will be ignored, however, is the push and pull between those warped sounds and the silence. “Extraordinary” battles itself from within, using noise to distract those from silence, the true chaotic element strung throughout Interior Designs. “Phantasia” is much the same, though its reliance of robotic bird chirps and 8-bit samples lend similarity to the soundtrack of ancient arcade gem Space Invaders. But faulting Jessica Rylan for exploring the endless sounds of her homemade machines would be mindless, though most of the album’s run time is engulfed in clunky transitions between synthetic experimentation into mindless tinkering. For all its unusual sounds and passages, Interior Designs is nothing more than a case study on synthesizers. That is, until the album’s self-titled finale breaks the technological stranglehold. Nothing more than a lazily strummed guitar and a canned marching beat, “Interior Designs” invades the pristine robotic future with a blast of lo-fi’s past. The messy guitar cuts into the serene drum machine, creating an organic track that provides a much needed counterpoint to the album’s overwhelming drone-synth assault, thus saving Interior Designs from being labeled as a cold, unforgiving album.
More about: Jessica Rylan
