Rotersand

Category: Electro-pop
Album: Truth Is Fanatic

I’ve wracked my brain for weeks trying to figure out why someone would like this CD. And, after all that time, I don’t think I’m really capable of figuring it out.

Rotersand, which apparently features members of 1AM and The Fair Sex, seems to be less than the sum of its parts. On the surface, they deliver just another variety of generic synthpop tracks, tarted up with the latest pounding drums. But, from the word on the street, I figured there’d have to be more than that. I’d listen again and again to the same tracks droning on endlessly, trying to figure out what someone would find interesting about these same tired electronic pop clichés laid over static noise and strange sounds. For the life of me, I can’t see it. It seems like so much recycled Covenant and VNV Nation to me. Though tracks like “Merging Oceans”, “Lifelight”, and “Electronic World Transmission” seem like decent enough club singles, there’s nothing new or relevant to them.

Never do the tracks really move far outside the realm of synthpop or rave-sounding club pop. But, when it does, it ends up seeming disconcerting rather than being a relief. Tracks like “One Level Down” come off as strange and misplaced and “Hush” seems to be nothing more than vapid treacle, fit only for easy-listening radio stations, and physically painful to listen to.

Some songs move past the simple generic nature of the music and become truly offensive. “Social Distortion”, featuring Sina Hübner of Pzycho Bitch “fame”, has to be one of the most rancid pieces of shit I’ve ever heard in my entire life. Her wretched, moaning, desperately “come-hither” spoken-word “vocals” tear at my brain with every listen, making me wince and fidget in a room by myself. I’d be embarrassed to be caught listening to such juvenile trash publicly. It makes me wonder how this trollop still has a career and why anyone would employ her to work on their album in any capacity.

All in all, I have no basis to really recommend or even discourage one from listening to this album, except for the case of “Social Distortion” and “Hush”. There is nothing pertinent here to listen to, despite claims by some that this is an album of merit. I am hard-pressed to find anything even memorable after several listens, despite trying desperately. And I can’t imagine mine will be the only case of feeling like this.

 

from ReGen Magazine (~2/2005)