Send "Black Mold " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Cokemachineglow |
 Look at us now, readers. The Glow has grown up with you. Remember when Nool would try to write a review like David Sedaris might? Remember, when we dog-piled a My Morning Jacket album like it was so many autumn leaves gathered for us to throw in the air? Remember when we really liked Interpol? Come, let us chuckle sadly together. This is akin to what J.K. Rowling devised in terms of intimately connecting her principal characters to her audience: Harry Potter and Harry Potter’s reader grow together from whimsy, brashness, and color into anxiety, drabness, and hormones. The big difference being that the Glow didn’t really devise anything and we amply succeeded in not making a lot of money off you. And our current equivalent of “hormones” is getting engaged or otherwise preparing the field for settling down. In fact, I’m getting married in about a month and a half; consequently, I can never again write a review like this. I think Dylan has a famous line I could insert here. But I won’t. My writing’s getting too tired for Dylan quotes, too.Chad VanGaalen has been as integral an artist as any in this maturing relationship of Glow and reader. In one of this site’s earliest reviews our venerable founder Scott Reid lavished Infiniheart (2004), VanGaalen’s debut on the wee label of Flemish Eye, with the kind of ardent praise that only comes from young, impressionable minds. Look at this: “Infiniheart is a stunning achievement that perfectly showcases VanGaalen’s many talents—singer, lyricist, songwriter, producer, and arranger—and though its epic length might be off-putting at first, it won’t take many listens before you’re clamouring for even more.” I mean, it’s been a long minute since I’ve seen Scott clamour for more; we were big-time pimping this unknown artist to you readers—this was a prototype NBH. A couple years later Scott was dissecting Skelliconnection (2006), VanGaalen’s sophomore follow-up on the not-so-wee label Sub Pop, with a bit more measured of a stance—still very much in love but acknowledging the things that could be better and mocking Chad’s rapping. The pimping had given way to honest conversation. By the time Soft Airplane (2008) rolled around Scott—perhaps wishing enthusiasm and verve upon his dear VanGaalen—decided to hand the reviewing reins over to some of CMG’s youngest blood in Alan Baban, but kids today are much older than we were at their age and so Alan professed his undying yet still thoroughly qualified love for Soft Airplane by way of phrases like “rabid peregrinations” and “disburdening involutions” and “post-auricular sheet metal apocalypse.” And each one of us was confused and yet also somehow understood what the review meant and it was because at that point every one of us knew all about Chad VanGaalen and, as Babs intended, we could scribble meaning into the ambiguous blanks of his statements with our own sharpened thoughts. The music world had become our intricate Mad Lib. Which is why we all nod in cold approval when VanGaalen—under the villainous pseudonym of Black Mold—pillages and rapes the bass part of MGMT’s “Electric Feel” for “Barn Swallow vs. SK-1.”...full text |
| Pitchfork |
| Chad VanGaalen is one of those Renaissance people you find scattered through indie rock. He makes records largely on his own, playing a huge array of instruments, and then he does the artwork and the impressive animated videos himself. He made his name with three increasingly excellent albums of glow-in-the-dark, ramshackle indie pop that showcase his odd falsetto and even odder inner world. He's also the author of one of the best modern murder ballads I've heard lately in "Molten Light", from last year's Soft Airplane. It's natural for a guy with VanGaalen's skill set to want to branch out, and so we now get Black Mold's Snow Blindness Is Crystal Antz, a collection of 19 mostly short instrumentals that give him a chance to stretch out and experiment. It makes sense to release it under the banner of an alter ego, because it really is a diversion from his output under his own name. His electro-acoustic tracks range from nicely developed pieces that skillfully blend contrasting textures and timbres to inconsequential sketches that feel like dry runs for something he might try in a more interesting song later. On the positive side of that coin, "Metal Spider Webs" opens the album by smashing together a little cello and clarinet with a heap of chimes and bubbling synthesizer, while the synth arpeggiations and pulsing static of "Swimming to Food" telegraph a sort of lonely sadness. The longest track, "Wet Ferns", is a drifting, buzzing song that harks back to a time when people made whole albums of Ondioline music and still thought of the future as a place we were all going to. "Rotten Walls" suggests he might try composing new scores for classic arcade games. On the other hand, there are a number of tracks that don't get beyond the idea phase. "Smoking Rat Shit" and "Dr. Snouth" are sketchy glitch experiments, while "No Dream Nation" is full of seemingly random drum hits and doesn't hit its stride until it's mostly over and brings in an eerie synth solo....full text |
| Urb |
| Chad VanGaalen has an undeniable knack for sound craft. He has built his own instruments from various scrap materials, reaffirming the old adage, “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure”, and it is with these instrumental creations that VanGaalen has developed his trademark style, with lo-fi experimentalism at its core. But as his Black Mold alter-ego, VanGaalen’s experimental juices surely have gone sour. Snow Blindness Is Crystal Antz is VanGaalen’s first installment as Black Mold, and quite honestly, he may as well call it a wrap at one LP. Snow Blindness… is chaotic, messy and frustrating, perhaps what VanGaalen was going for, but a pain in the ass to listen to nonetheless. While there are a few saving graces among the nineteen tracks on the Snow Blindness…, they are vastly eclipsed by the nightmarish 8-bit Atari-sounds-gone-wrong that pollute the majority of the LP. With exceptions granted to “Metal Spider Webs,” “Uke Puke” and “Wet Ferns,” Snow Blindness… is an indecipherable mess of spastic glitches and fuzz. If it weren’t for the fact that the average track length is just about two minutes, with out such frequent intervals, Snow Blindness Is Crstyal Antz might launch listeners into extreme convulsions....full text |
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