Spastic Ink

Ink Complete

1997 Dream Circle

Review by Jason Sorens

Spastic Ink is the brainchild of Ron Jarzombek, former Watchtower guitarist. On "Ink Complete" he teams up with Pete Perez on bass and Bobby Jarzombek on drums to forge an instrumental album of mindblowing mathematics.

For that is what this album is: pure mathematics. Playing with odd time signatures, unexpected tempo changes, and note or key restrictions is what this band does. Just one example: the song "See, and It's Sharp" is composed entirely of the notes C and C#. They use four octaves, so they do get a little range in there. In fact, it's not a bad song.

In another instance, Spastic Ink transcribes the sounds, voices, and music from an old cartoon movie into parts for guitar, bass, and drums, along with some computerized strings. The result is "A Wild Hare."

The downside of all this experimentation is that most of these songs are tuneless. Also, little attemption was paid to production values, and the result is a sound that I can best describe as "trashy."

The best song on this CD is "To Counter and Groove in E-Minor," which fuses a dance groove drumbeat to a classical melody. I love classical melodies played on electric guitar, so that made the song for me.

Bottom line: if you enjoy complexity for complexity's sake, mathematics for the sheer dauntingness of it all, you will love this album. If you like a little melody and coherence, probably not. If you like a good groove and a raw guitar sound, no way.

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