Reviewed by Eric Saeger
San Antonio’s response to Freezepop, Hyperbubble are possessed of a fetish for retro-80s synthpop, which, as a dead art, requires mass tonnage of hype to get any traction. Being from the tech mecca of Boston, Freezepop has always had the advantage, nowadays thriving in their design/video-game day-gigs while Hyperbubble does God knows what to put (pastel day-glo sparkly) bread on the table. They’re a pain in the neck every time they show up in my mailbox: is this a kiddie band, a joke band, etc., or what, and now this, which markets itself as some sort of “cinema” dingbattery; it literally took me 5 minutes to figure out this is a music CD and not some sort of annoying DVD music/art trip, because having totally forgotten about their previous LP Candy Apple Daydreams – the CD I thought was Teletubby kiddie music – Drastic Cinematic comes off as some sort of noir-ish ego-fest trying to shove some silly-ass idea of Culture I Need To Understand down my throat, like I don’t immerse myself in enough deconstructionist hatefulness as it is. Gahh, whatever, instead of their usual Ladytron-wannabe stuff, this time they’ve swiveled their 8-bit Korgs and Casios in the direction of soundtracking for, I dunno, 1980s B-horror films, tabling only one or two actual tunes in this unwelcome burst of retro-spookypants nonsense. Why am I even talking about this? Simple: because if you’re thinking of trying something like this, don’t.
Grade: C
