With his DIY keyboard and photoshop ethic, Gigantic Brain has brought an innovative and well received sci-fi feel to what is quite an exclusive and conservative genre, his first release the Invasion Discography earnt his shot at the title amongst the "frequently played" list among many a fan of the genre. With each following release, the fast relentless drum trigger happy wacko Grind has been slowly been superseded with a more ambient touch, which has overall given it a far more cosmos feel,yet reactions have been mixed and tend to lye at extremities with no one finding it average. And here before us free for all you homosapien's to enjoy is his latest episode;They Did This to Me.
Gigantic Brain sticks to this blueprint, offering a nice variation of Grinding moments, and a collection of atmospheric ones, with a strong use of volume control to show the contrast between the two. The drumming has been slowed down a bit, and the grind moments have been elongated to last longer than the traditional 5 second blast, however with the elongation Gigantic Brain is able to input a more industrious and resolute sound.
As always the space feel to it is ever present, and is exemplified greater in this album than in any other release to date, however his promise of "taking Grindcore to the Stars" is perhaps no longer applicable. The moments of Grindcore are too few and too far between, and neglecting that cut throat ferocity and bizarreness that made his name in the first place, one could say that perhaps the Grindcore moments have also become somewhat standardised. The song Birds has that boy bandish feel to it with its acoustic guitaring and emotional murmuring, and was a great disappointment to me as it seemed so incongruous, no universe feel what so ever aside from a small rare background alienish interjection, and the following and penultimate track was a disappointment also, and although the final track was good, it couldn't quite counter my embittered left to me after the previous two songs.
Despite a general negative nature of the article, I still have no regrets listening to They Did This to Me, the majority of it was delightful to listen to, although I would of preferred more Grinding madness to it. Overall I would say that he perhaps is a victim of his ultra DIY ethic, had he stuck to his amazing keyboard work, scary alien vocals and insane machine drum beats and even his encapsulating ambient feel, this release could of easily been on my top list, however I feel his experimentation especially with guitars and vocals has been a great detriment to the overall feel of the album. It perhaps would of been best left as E.P instead of an album, some tracks are of excellent quality, and others of questionable nature and had They Did This to Me been refined to the better ones, I am certain that it would of been another solid release to add to his name, yet I hear on the internet that this is to be his last release, and this saddens me seeing that his music is by far some of the most creative out there.