The Music Tapes: 1st Imaginary Symphony For Nomad

Rarely has a band been more appropriately named. Listening to The Music Tapes' 1st Imaginary Symphony For Nomad is like stumbling on a pile of unfinished recordings from a forgotten, extremely peculiar composer—complete with all the pleasures and frustrations that image implies. Primarily the brainchild of Neutral Milk Hotel's Julian Koster, Imaginary Symphony was recorded on outmoded equipment, including an Edison wax-cylinder recorder, with apparently little regard for cohesiveness, or at times coherence. Ideas, both musical and lyrical, float in and out of the album, from a resurfacing theremin to talk of Superman, but the prevailing mood is one of barely controlled chaos, which may have been the intention all along. To choose just one interchangeable example, "What The Single Made The Needle Sing…" sounds like a nightmare collapse of popular music styles, with a Beatles-like melody eventually devolving into cacophony. Both it and the album as a whole are the sort of recordings that reward careful and intensely attentive listening, but also depend too much on it. Not a whole lot here, unlike the work of Neutral Milk Hotel, is enjoyable outside of intensely attentive listening, and even that probably calls too much attention to some juvenile lyrics about alien invaders. Willfully, almost perversely eccentric, Imaginary Symphony is an often fascinating side project that's practically devoid of superficial pleasures like sustained melodies, which also might have been the intention all along. Connoisseurs of violently fragmented pop will find a lot to like here, but 1st Imaginary Symphony For Nomad should prove rough going for anyone else.