18th December 2009

Audio with 20 plays

Wallscenery Demos - Stephen Harper
Check This! (self-release)

Wallscenery Demos is the musical project of James Hicken.  His new record, Check This!, is a sound-collage of beats, acoustic pop, and indie rock, all with a healthy layering of lo-fi distortion across the top.  The record definitely works well as one you might want to listen to from start to finish, as each track seems to lead to the next one, and there are neat little interludes in between almost ever full cut.

I asked Hicken what he was attempting to get across with his music.  Here’s what he said:

I use these albums as a way of documenting whats going on around me… from weird random encounters with a person on crack while doing my laundry, to relationships, dealing with change, commercial music, confusion, bad habits, financial difficulty, etc… I want people to be able to look at the body of work after several albums and hear different stuff that I’ve been up to.

I’m interested to see a full body of work along these lines.  I hope I can come back in a few years and see what kind of story has worked itself out.

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