Plasticized

Review by Darren Kerr

Meet Pink Noise Test. Like careless kids, they leave bubblegum everywhere, and, like the shoegazers of yore, their feet have been surgically attached to their fuzzy wuzzy distortion pedals. Every song on this CD has some form of electronic stimuli painted over it, be it oscillator skronk, keyboard loops -- or pink noise. It's quite a dense record, layered thick with everything but power tools.

The best song is the lead-off track, "Girl, Can't You Tell," with its great snap-back bridge, but there is plenty of other stuff here, too: short pop songs with ooh-aah harmonies, MBV-ish rave-ups, long atmospheric creepers. The whole thing comes off like a glomming of Flaming Lips and Spacemen 3, though not as organically stoned as the former or as hypnotic and narcoleptic as the latter. You could do worse.