Artificial Wonders - 3 Bottles

Hear The Track Here

Just when I had got used to Artificial Wonders brand of game soundtrack, the man goes and changes the game on me. Everyone who knows me knows that I have a particularly strong dislike for the whole soundtrack thing but never more vituperous than when faced with games soundtracks. I like them in the games of course, who wouldn't? Some are awesome and definitely achieve their objective, to dramatise THE GAME. Set alone on its own, games sound tracks are mainly just another instrumental except for very rare exceptions (so what ever happened to Sound Radius anyway?) Having said that, Artificial Wonders hasn't fared to badly at all. To be sure I have been lukewarm a couple of times but there is no doubting the man's sincerity.

So, apparently having taken some months off to reconsider his musical output, he lit upon the novel idea of making industrial music. As it happens, this is one of my favourite modern sounds, I just love industrial drum sounds. It's actually a song about the AHDD/ADHD drug Ritalin which IMHO has harmed countless American youngsters more than it's helped - as Artificial Wonders obviously learned for himself, the hard way. Sounds then, to me anyway, like a life changing experience and so it should be, music has had that power in my own life so I can only share this musicians wonder at the process. There again, then the man went and remixed it and remixed it and remixed it and remixed it and... Mmmmm. So, the version I have is seven and presumably the last and maybe all that remixing had a point because 3 Bottles, although a bit untidy in arrangement is a solid, nay hefty chunk of industrial mayhem.

Definitely not an easy listen though because although all of the sounds are authentically industrial, the final feel and tone of the track is definitely experimental electronica in every respect. Yes, there IS a song there, but you would be hard pressed to identify it as such. That doesn't matter so much because what comes over here is the feeling that Ritalin can induce in you, that edgy, unidentifiable, fear of everything - the kind of music that perches you on the edge of your seat and suspends you there until its done. So to get the whole story, I suggest you have the lyrics before you when tackling this track and only go and listen to it if you like industrial experimental done at full throttle. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Edgy and bizarre tale with a resonant moral. Recommended for the honesty for sure.