illusionofjoy | OTR: Apoptygma Berzerk

Q: What do Moby and Stephan Groth have in common? A: They have both sampled music from Twin Peaks; the former in "Go," the latter in "Moment of Tranquillity," (which he actually dedicates to David Lynch in the liner notes).

It was right on the brink of failing out of college that I discovered Apoptygma Berzerk. The Winter Break where 2002 stumbled into 2003 was one where I spent many late nights aimlessly surfing the Internet, listening to various Live365 stations. It was on a station labelled "Perkigoth Radio" that I heard the single edit of "Kathy's Song (Come Lie Next To Me)." "Oh glorious synthpop," I exclaimed inwardly, "Is this an Erasure song I've yet to hear?"

"What a minute," I'm sure you're thinking, "you were listening to a streaming radio station and you didn't bother to look at the on-screen display in the streaming window to find out what you were listening to if you liked it so much? What kind of a dumb-ass fuckwit are you?" Well, see, gentle reader, it's not so simple. There was an issue with my mother's old Apple Macintosh where the browser software would not render new webpages - especially those involving streaming media - properly. As such, the damn song was played three times before the media player saw fit to load up the title and artist! Once I had that essential information, along with the glowing endorsement of several LiveJournal friends, I purchased a copy of Welcome To Earth.

I've often said that hype kills...more on that later.

I don't remember if I got the letter telling me that I'd been kicked out of school before I bought the album or afterwards. I do remember appealing said letter (a closed process where I didn't even get to face the decision-makers), and having that appeal rejected. At this point, I had three options: 1.) Wait a year for academic forgiveness and then return to school with whatever passing credits I had; 2.) Wait five years and return with full academic forgiveness and a limited set of credit-hours; or 3.) Get the hell out of dodge. I went for option number three - after having wasted four and half years and thousands of dollars, I just could not envision myself going back to school. Tuition prices had just been hiked up significantly (it's only gotten worse) and one of the factors contributing to my failure was my constant money worries. So, I took what meagre savings I had and moved to Pittsburgh.

It was due to this move - from contemptible familiarity to the unknown - where the chorus to "Starsign" felt particularly poignant: "I'm waiting for a sign, to leave this world behind, where no one knows my name." It's a classic case of grafting personal meaning onto someone else's writing, but damn if it wasn't how I felt at that point: get me the fuck out of Potsdam, New York and it's small-town mentality. Get me away from the cows and corn and the conservatives! Get me away from this pseudo-intellectual oasis of deceit where they roll the sidewalks up at 9:00PM and piercings and drunkenness are okay, but eyeliner is a sin! Compared to Potsdam, Pittsburgh is Mecca.

It has been years since I'd listened to Welcome To Earth in it's entirety. I think I may have judged it too harshly at first. It's a good album, and the high points ("Kathy's Song," "Starsign" and "Paranoia") are indeed very high, but this is far from the second coming that some would have me believe it to be. A lot of the songwriting is just weak ("Soultaker") or wankerific ("Help Me!"). Also, there is too much dependence on "filler," which on this album is every track with a running time of less than three minutes. It would be a great album if a lot of the fat were cut and the sequence tightened up - nine or ten tracks would have been a less strenuous listen. Hell, this could have been a brilliant five-song EP!

Still, I can't help but get up and dance to "Kathy's Song." In the words of derekcfpegritz, "this is the jam!"