Snap Sounds: Rollercoaster Project

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ROLLERCOASTER PROJECT
Revenge
(Absolutely Kosher)

A Dickens quote culled from A Child’s History of England and the note, “All songs made with careful horror and loving attention” accompany the second album, Revenge, by The Rollercoaster Project (ne Johnny White). Spectral, spooked, and downright epic in its use of tweaked audio, cassette tapes, samples, synthesizers, and piano, it gently tags the film score work by Popul Vuh, sending a listener off on mind travel, far from petty retribution.

Then, just when you’re settling into a meditative reverie, it starts to rage -- a splatter of vokills is tossed artfully across the silken tundra of synths -- with faint echos of the White Zombie and Sepultura that play into its musician’s makeup, along with Black Flag, whose classic hardcore number partly inspired RP’s project. White claims that the Rollercoaster Project is “a vain attempt to make an audio version of the film Manhunter. ”Sans the “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida,” one presumes -- and genre labels like post-rock or post-hardcore. Revenge or no, Rollercoaster Project wins.

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