Soft Punk review by Willie B

Funny that.

After establishing himself as a closet recluse knob diddleing genius through underrated split effort releases, including works with noise giants Merzbow & Wolf Eyes , spanning over 50 releases, under various aliases, John Wiese finally decides to release his first full length, under TroubleMan Records. Soft Punk.

So, What's in a name? In this case, the exact opposite if you take his sound at face value. If you like your beats linear, your grooves hefty, and your structure thorough, then I highly suggest moving onwards. This onslaught was micro-sugerically nursed by interlacing classic and mildly familiar punk rock jingles with tectonically extreme frequency avalanches.

This is not music. This is sound exploration. So to try and enjoy this is, well, out of question. It is an experience that will leave you at your most vulnerable. And that that's not necessarily a bad thing either as it strips you down to the point of being beyond naked. If anything, the album is a healing device, designed to sway you from your everyday and remind you of the beauty in places you seem to forget about.

Soft Punk by Trevor Spencer

So I listened to this album by John Wiese. If you have had a migraine that made sound and enjoyed it, this is the album for you. There were elements of it that I didn't mind. But I found myself drifting in and out of paying attention to it. He seemed to over use that white noise sound. That noise you get between the stations on the radio dial. Not the whiney one. Just the staticky one. Kind of like that noise they play during torture scenes in the Saw movies. It was a far too much of a re-occuring theme throughout the whole thing. If you listened you would know what I mean. It reminded me of if you took a recorder and went outside and just recorded the noises you captured in the universe. Then threw it all into a bucket. Shook it up. And then called that the finished product. The music isn't linear whatsoever. If compositional elements exist, they are really hard to pick up. Maybe I just don't understand this kind of thing. But I also doubt many people do. I understand listening to music that many people don't understand. A lot of people don't understand metal. But I think this kind of music would be even less appealing to the masses. If you want a bunch of white noise with some Fantomas elements backed by a sonic headache, this is the album for you. My experience while listening to this wasn't negative. It was something. Something I don't know how to categorize. Will I listen to it again? Definitely not. Does that mean I hated it? No. It just means I don't get it and don't think I ever will.