Rafter reviewed
Rafter
Music For Total Chickens
(Asthmatic Kitty)
The cover image for this album appears to be a chicken egg exploding in mid-air, an adequate description of how your head will feel upon listening to it.
Rafter, aka TV commercial constructioneer Rafter Roberts, eventually asks you to “imagine a world without violence” on his debut long player. Of course, by this time he has already torn it to shreds. An amalgam of loose time signatures, random instrumentation, and gentle vocal harmonies, Music For Total Chickens runs around with its head cut off, shooting streams of blood all over the furniture. While he never raises his voice — in fact, Roberts mostly sounds as if he’s singing a hushed lullaby and is making up the words — he interrupts tranquility with blasts of noise (“Your War” leading into “Unassailable”) and even manages to sound like a Sparklehorse protege on “Boy.” However the random-violence motif doesn’t lend itself to repeated listening and Rafter ends up mostly with egg on his face.
— Steve Forstneger
Click here to download “Gentlemen.”
