The FOER Programme by FOER: An Album Review by Dieter Klo

The FOER Progamme (Cover)

Today, music will never be the same. It is rare to see the birth of a new genre in this day and age, but I am proud, nay, I am honored to present to you: FOER and its self made sound: Font. Four MIT drop outs have gathered their collective skills and diverse taste, along with a healthy/unhealthy obsession with music, to create the newest, greatest mechanism to be introduce into the confines of music. The most life-changing thing that has ever... thinged in the music industry. FOER, a computer program that is all at once the band in of itself and the instrument has been born. FOER uses tech jargon and computer shit to create the compositions based solely off words plugged into the program. Genius! FOER has millions of reference points within its data bases, such as: sound bites, pre-recorded sounds, never-before-recorded music, sheet music, critical reviews ranging from the highest music review, such as the New Yorker and Encyclopedia Britannica, to the lowest, dark trenches of internet reviews such as Pitchfork, Sputnikmusic, and, the horror, Youtube Reviewers. But that is the glory of the FOER Program! it takes even the plebian's non-opinions into account for its work. Genius! 

So what racket does the music sound? you ask. Well, Each track is an experimentation with the FOER machine -- a new type of instrument? it's only natural. The program itself only requires a selection of words from its human aspect to produce the music, the Humans, they being Fred Almis, Ols Vår, Ellen Ztar, and Paul "Rice" Janes -- or so the linear notes and billing says they're called ("Rice", really? Really?) -- plug in words for the program. These form the titles of the songs. Most of them taking the shape of actual thought out phrases but then divulging into what are in essence nonsensical lacks-of-sensicallity. Let us sojourn through them all, track-by-track.

1. "The First Track by the First Man-Made Music Maker"

A lyrical beginning to a landmark album, which is ironic: this track is instrumental. Minimal piano sing-songs played over a building Fincher/Ross/Reznor soundtrack death drone that feels like Nirvana (the Buddhist concept not the 90s concept of "good" music).

2. "What's that Sound?"
Distorted post-punk guitar, female vocals a la Nico. Arrhythmic drum spikes with no discernible beat or scheme with an indifferent synth plopping in and out. It creates Foreign atmospheric xenoscapes with the textured cacophony of death.

3. "Austin, Texas. Dallas."
Hypno-repetitive banjo riffs with ultradramatic electronic BRRAAAAAAMM spikes like it's Inception or some shit. A mid-castration punk screams in an echo chamber made of bone flutes, about random locations in Austin, TX. Mostly talking about what horrific things happened there. The BRAAAAMMMMS turn into a Phil Spector wall of sound for like 3 minutes. I think that's the 'Dallas' part.

4. "Math Heavy Gypsy Tango"
Bongos. And Balkan sax.

5. "Minute Static"
A voice whispers wordlessly, with tiny static twists, a la Coil (Moonmusick era) -- three parts each a minute long. The Programme took the word 'minute' to mean small and a duration of time, but felt the need to create three different versions that are basically the samething. Yet totally different.

6. "Post-post-post-post-post-post-post Music"
I have absolutely no idea what is even going on right now, you just have to listen to it. They dont have words for whatever this...thing is. The closest we have are "sound", "nihilism", and "fishsticks". *shudders*

7. "The Time Skip Disco Forger's Hi-Fi Hip-Hop Zydeco Goth Routine"

The longest of all the tracks, clocking in at 17 hours. It's one of the disgusting prog-revival songs. Brooding esoteric guitar with a bootle neck pic, with a bass that sounds like time is slammimg against it. The drums come from Mars and feel just as dead and the random flute solos sounds like the flutist is gasping for air. FOER goes through each of the listen genres in the title at thripple speed and then sort of forgets that they're there. The concept of the song (cuz there has to be a fucking concept) is about Buddha and John Travolta going through a wormhole or something, I wasnt really listening.

8. "Eowoqye dopw ei (Wg7s Susso)"
Post-industrial meets Industrial with...you ever hear the sound of a banjo makes while raped? Picture the opposite of that.

9. "The Penultimate Tract"
A quiet track about the existential decay of man, know as Father Pastor, incapacitated by the echelons of age, observes the dejected rejection of a happy man's life. This pious man weeps at the fate of his poor ucalegon. The lyrics are moving, in spite of their unintelligible cohesion. What saves this downfall is the timbre of the words and the laconic, lilting guitar (which plays like piano off the vinyl). A beautiful song. One truly feels for the Baptist Bishop, tract in hand, as he watches tragedy unfold before him, but incapable to assist. Arresting.

10.
The track is left untitled. It's almost like a hidden track -- hailing back to the good ol' days of proper CD music. The silent build, the teasing of the wait. It's beautiful. They make you wait so long, so long I couldn't take it. I had waited an hour for that next track, but it was only silence. Stronger Listeners than I will find that track. Hidden at the end of that silence that seemed to go on...forever. Genius!

Verdict: 9.863/10