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Final verdict: 9/10 ★★★★⋆˙⟡
A person from Taiwan recently brought this record to my attention, prompted by what appeared to be no ulterior motive. According to them, they are not a puppeteering force behind the project and they randomly discovered it by way of the mysterious Spotify algorithm – they found it deeply satisfying, and decided to get it reviewed (by yours truly) just so there is some account of this hyper-niche record on the World Wide Web. But oh, what does it matter? This album is a spectacular oddity floating well above its status.
I stood unable to find any information on I AP online, as this is a name profoundly SEO-unfriendly. Similarly, there is not much to work off of with the album either, so all that shall be discussed in the present document is the music. Which… is it really music? Does sound collage qualify as music? I mean, the musical elements are there, and it would be a disgrace to refer to such a fascinating auditory experience as mere “noise.” It is music, both to my heart and to my ears, but that is up to each receiver’s own interpretation. What I am getting at through this seemingly endless discursive maze is that this isn’t quite “music” – it is an ambient/noise/sound collage conundrum that is seriously surreal and most haunting. There is a ghost in the room with us, I promise you. Don’t blink for too long.
The soundscape is minimal yet bigger-than-life and the aural texture can be most aptly described as “gritty” and “rough” – not so much lo-fi as it is otherworldly – with the fleeting musical phrases feeling like the most dissonant parts of the recording by a long shot. The album is split into five tracks that feel more like five movements of a space opera than five “songs” on your standard rock LP. There is not much for the ear to grasp onto, and that is perhaps what is most entertaining about this nifty little record – the listener is left to fight the current on his own devices, make what he will out of this finely-orchestrated cacophony, and eventually drown in it. The album cover (a photograph of an ornate picture frame displaying yet another photograph of an ordinary landscape) is equally uncanny, and while it has nothing to do with the album, it also kind of does. It feels vaguely redundant, a photograph in a photograph like a nested Russian doll, sort of like a time trip, and it perfectly fits the music it fronts – I wouldn’t have it any other way.
The person from Taiwan – from the little chit-chat I’ve had with them – appears to be feeling the same way about this album. What makes this project interesting is how much it differs from other sound collage records of the modern era, and how such an interesting artefact is going unnoticed in the bottomless pit that is Apple Music. It is all a little unfair, but it is a chief example of what I call the “media graveyard paradox” – brilliant artwork that permanently resides in the mossiest corners of the internet, never to see the light of day. It is a contradictory concept precisely because “what goes on the internet stays on the internet indefinitely and can be accessed by anyone at any time,” yet here we are; terabytes upon terabytes of potentially meritorious art that never got – and will probably never get – a chance to be enjoyed by anyone at all. The internet is all the more interesting for it, but again, it is rather unfair – to who, I cannot say. In a spin-off of the “American Dream,” we have the “Internet Dream,” only that too has turned out to be a notion fat with deceit. Life is but a riddle in three syllables.
I am feeling odd – not conflicted, not confused. I found this album to be a marvel of the highest order, and there is nothing contesting that sentiment – but the thought that such curious work does not blend into the cultural fabric at any point certainly has me thinking about the “media graveyard” idea more than I usually do. It is all most discombobulating, but such is life. And oh, digital sprawl, change never do. 9/10.
LISTEN:
Silia 
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