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Adamson's heady blend of Odelay-era Beck, Roky Erickson paranoia, cosmic hip-hop, and general Animal Collective weirdness sounds like a train wreck in print, but his knack for odd melodies, stealthy programming, timely pitch-shifting, and macabre (and occasionally hysterical) subject matter helps to keep things consistently interesting throughout Ropechain's easily digestible 45-minute runtime.
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It’s great music and it clearly showcases the fact that Grampall Jookabox should have a steady and successful career ahead of him.
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What places Ropechain, Grampall’s second release for Sufjan Stevens’ Asthmatic Kitty label, above its emotionally vacant peers is a willingness to trade drugged-out euphoric rambling with tangible anxiety.
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UncutFor all his experimentalism, Adamson never once loses sight of the song. [Dec 2008, p.94]
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Absurdly entertaining, and quite disturbing, Ropechain will most certainly not be to the tastes of many. But it must be admired for its originality and brain-shakingly ridiculous beauty.
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With Ropechain, the emotional turnaround's reversed: An initial, burning desire to hate everything about this album--the stylistic mish-mash, the artistic blackface, the blah cover art--gives way to wary admiration, even though it's hard to shake the sense that its creator's something of a jerk.