"Messy" sure is right. This debut album from Japanese composer Robert Edwin sounds like the aural equivalent of taking big heaping helpings of everything in the fridge and throwing it in a casserole and shoving it in the oven for a few hours. Wait, maybe that doesn't really do it justice. Maybe it's more like the kid in art class who has a little too much fun fingerpainting. Basically what I'm trying to get at is, this album is a big jumble of a lot of different sounds and genres (prog-metal, hip-hop, jazz fusion, house, electro, glitch, etc.) and it rarely stays still for a minute. It reminds me of some of the spazzy, experimental yet humorous not-quite-pop that Tigerbeat6 used to release tons of earlier in the decade. It definitely has the air of being some sort of "musician's record"; perhaps more of a showcase of one's technical abilities than something you'd, well, listen to on a regular basis.

As deliberately all-over-the-place as the album is, it's certainly not without its quirky charms. If nothing else, you certainly won't be able to name another disc that sounds exactly like it. 6/10 -- Paul Simpson (15 April, 2009)