Michael Jackson and Vice President Dick Cheney excepted, there are few creatures in this world more unsettling and generally creepy than cicadas (or "locusts," as they are typically, and incorrectly, referred to in the Midwest). Ugly and repugnant, yet somehow able to arouse ghoulish fascination, cicadas are a seasonal fixture that you get used to after a while, until you don't even think about them any more; though deep down inside you know they're there, lurking in the shadows. Like the monotonous, summertime thrum of the cicada, there is something disquieting, yet strangely assuasive, about Everyone is Everyone, the new full-length release from Magicicada, issued on Baltimore's Public Guilt Records.
Magicicada is the project of musician Christopher White, a long-time resident of Atlanta. Everyone is Everyone is an incredibly enigmatic release that shares characteristics with several musical genres. Though the occasional glimpse of free folk can be caught here, Magicicada should best be thought of as pure sound design where instrumentation takes on secondary, even tertiary importance. Mood and atmosphere are the operative words here. None of the tracks on Everyone is Everyone possess anything resembling conventional song structure””at least, not for very long. The murky and brooding "Wellbelow" is the album's only track featuring recognizable vocals; in this case, sung by Trulee Grace Hall. Periodically, a recognizable musical instrument surfaces through the music's chemical haze, but White is clearly in his element piecing these tracks together using layer upon layer of field recordings, incidental noises, and "found sounds."
Though Everyone is Everyone fits neatly, for the most part, into the "noise rock" pigeonhole, the album, with its cavernous, nocturnal atmosphere, is more akin to the recordings of Birchville Cat Motel and Stars of the Lid than Wolf Eyes and Jazzkammer. Magicicada's tracks are long, dense patchworks of undulating, mechanical sounds that recall the disturbing, twilit world of David Lynch's Eraserhead. As Alan Splet's sound design was the perfect accompaniment to the grim industrial wasteland Lynch's characters inhabited, Hall's recordings seem to evoke images of a similar environment. Hissing pipes, electrical white noise, metallic drones, and other unidentifiable sounds, whether natural or unnatural, are the backbone, if one can consider it as much, of Everyone is Everyone.
One of those CDs that you deliberately put off opening because it looks so fascinating, Everyone is Everyone is a beautifully packaged album that is a work of art in itself. White's mysterious and deliberately obscure artwork gives the listener little idea of what resides inside, but in an era of digital music where the significance of cover art and packaging has all but gone by the wayside, this Magicicada album really stands out. An intriguing and engaging release, Magicicada's Everyone is Everyone is a highly listenable record that juxtaposes delicate ambient passages with harsh, edgy soundscapes.
1. Coso Joru
2. Secret History
3. Wellbelow
4. I Demand My Fucking Cloud
5. Turi'
6. Peach is Pink
7. Cause
8. For the Father
9. Huri'