Hans Fjellestad

Dedicated to late impresario Robert Moog, whose legacy is documented in Hans Fjellestad’s ’04 film Moog, Snails R Sexy, Fjellestad’s latest and begrudgingly accessible album, buries its influences. Not that the L.A. film- and music-maker is generally known for being one dimensional — quite the opposite — but the electronics incorporated on Snails are less than easily identifiable as synth-based. Case in point, opening the epic "Fist” are straightforward enough alternating keys that skip through a passing resemblance to melody for a drawn-out version of the intro to "Everything in its Right Place” (there’s the accessibility) before extending into a ten-minute hum of vacuum tube processors. Throughout the record there are a number of instances where chirping birds are introduced to the chaotic textures but, curiously, no snails. Maybe they just don’t make enough noise. More provocative thematically is the fact that birds, and their relationship to bees, are the more obvious choice for a sexy animal. Most provocative are the wandering piano pings running through "Love Dart” and "Now That We Are Happy” that turn into sporadic analogue synth pulses. Somewhere, snails are living in Bob.