World’s End Girlfriend: Seven Idiots (Erased Tapes, 6/21/11)
World’s End Girlfriend: “Teenage Ziggy”
[audio:http://alarm-magazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Worlds_End_Girlfriend_Teenage_Ziggy.mp3|titles=World’s End Girlfriend: “Teenage Ziggy”]World’s End Girlfriend is the wild, hyper-melodic project of Japanese composer Katsuhiko Maeda, whose vivid arrangements have created a following in his homeland and been used in critically acclaimed films. Originally released last year in Japan, Seven Idiots is his tenth studio album.
The music is a dense, larger-than-life blend of post-rock, classical music, and electronica, and within just the first minute of Seven Idiots, the listener is hit with a beautiful union of Battles-esque guitar lines, funky bass slaps, classical melodies, glitch beats, and squiggly synth lines. As the album progresses, it delves into polyrhythms, improvisation, and other complexities — particularly during the “Bohemian Purgatory” triptych — but a robust sense of melody and an opportunity for head-nodding are almost always at its core.