Adrian T Lakey

Adrian T Lakey - On My Way Out

no label CD

Contact: adrianlakey [at] yahoo.com

I take no great pleasure from dishing out venomous reviews. I’d much prefer to receive material of the highest quality, composed by artists who have a well rounded view on life, have natural talent and an ability to explore the nether regions of the experimental noise drone world and come back with a work that stands the test of time, leads the listener down different genre avenues, becomes a classic, an oft repeated spinner that brings tears of joy to dreamy eyes.

Unfortunately none of this will apply to Adrian T Lakey and On My Way Out.

Why? because this is the biggest pile of shit it has ever been my displeasure to listen to. It’s not often I have to recourse to such rudimentary language but in this instance there really is no other word that will suffice. Think of the worst release you ever heard in your life and multiply it by 28 bazillion and you may come close to On My Way Out. But don’t take my word for it. Get hold of this CD skip straight to track seven [it’ll be far less painful believe me] and imagine the soundtrack to a SNES game, say Zelda: Links Awakening over which someone sings in a deep voice a load of bollock lyrics and you have the title track. Dear reader to say that I listened to this mish mash of styles and pap with ever growing incredulity is to do this release an injustice. It is so bad, I have to say, without a shadow of a doubt, that its the worst thing I have ever listened to in my entire life and I have listened to plenty of shit.

Things begin ominously enough with some strummed acoustic guitar and singing, not exactly singing but more like the devil talking in a deep scary voice kind of way. Next track begins with piano and a voice sung in a ‘I’m so sad’ kind of way, there’s background synth swirls too to add that extra special doomy kind of atmosphere and then for no explicable reason some field recordings taken in what sounds like a car compacting scrap yard.

Things start to go really downhill though around track three [Bad Skin Forever] when a rapid Eurotrash synth pop intro gives way to the lyric ‘Bad skin forever, germs will focus in between icicles and oil’ ‘Outsider’ was lifted straight from an eighties computer game in which you’re a little elf looking for hidden coins in a forest littered with friendly crocodiles [er.. that’ll be Zelda again]. It was around this time that I began to wonder if this was a joke release sent to me with the intention of seeing just how far my spleen could vent when faced with such utter ridiculous garbage. If it was then it worked. This is worse than bad. Its the work of someone who has no grasp on reality. They think adding samples of spacemen communicating whilst singing in a deep scary voice is somehow entertaining. And what’s with the eighties computer game soundtracks? Is this retro and avant garde at the same time? It sounds like Schloss Tegal made and album using a SNES. It’s awful, every last second of it and I never want to hear it ever, ever, ever again

Above all I fear for Adrian’s mental well being. No, I really do. I shudder to think what may be behind the person that put this together. At least they have a sense of humour as evinced in the press release; a satirical affair that was a template on how to construct a press release and then there’s the word search puzzle entitled ‘Something to do n the Bathroom’ in which you could search for everything from Mahmoud Ahmandinejad to Whitehouse to Black Sabbath, So far so good and then and then and then …

It sounds as if Arian T Lakey once spent too much time with early Nintendo games before going on to discover indie strum and maybe somewhere along the line Illusion of Safety and Schloss Tegal. Thats not the end of the world of course but if I had to listen to On My Way Out again it could be the end of mine.