Free Time!

Pinkunoizu is a Danish quartet that plays an unclassifiable kind of music that's ambient in feel with touches of prog rock, radio-friendly pop, minimal new music, and world influences floating through a mix that's alternately murky and clear as a bell. Short, almost-pop tunes rub up against long, meandering excursions that unfold with their own peculiar logic, tossing out the hint of a singalong chorus only to subvert it with what sounds like processed didgeridoo or an avalanche of haphazard sounds. Psychedelic is the most apt description of the music, but the eight swirling kaleidoscopic pieces that make up the album don't really fit easily into a single category, or, perhaps, they fit into every category at once. Chiming guitars and washes of foggy noise meet unintelligible lyrics on the opener "Time Is Like a Melody" before slipping into "Myriad Pyramid," a faux-Latin/Arab groove with a ghostly choir adding to the puzzling electronic aura. "Everything Is Broken or Stolen" rides a bubbly percussive track, while a bleary vocal and odd keyboard effects dance in the background, broken by random glitchy effects. Suitably dark sound effects float in and out of the flamenco-flavored groove of "Death Is Not a Lover." There are vocals here, but they're mixed into an unintelligible soup until the end of the tune, when the title is repeated with a melody that recalls Doc Boggs's "Oh Death" before shifting into a bright dance-rock track that competes with another tidal wave of dissonant, rhythmic vocal clatter. Listing to Pinkunoizu will leave you slightly dazed, not unlike the aftermath of an unexpected but pleasant acid trip. The music is enjoyable, and the lyrics, when you can hear them, are wicked and witty, but the lack of dynamics often crosses over from hypnotic to somnambulant ~ j. poet, Rovi