[rating=2.50]
Although Infradig’s Clinical Indifference/The Psychology of Breathing purports to be a jazz rock record, it comes across more as mood-making electronic rock, pop, and hip-hop. The similarities to jazz end at the lack of lyrics and drums, guitar and upright bass. As a jazz-related stretch, “Shadowsphere” involves Joshua Caleb Green’s rolling-techno drum beat that many jazz drummers (e.g., Terreon Gully) are using in the modern day. Spaceship and intergalactic samples mix with the instruments, creating a great video game soundtrack suitable for background music. As Infradig’s website states, Clinical is electro-funk-IDM, albeit for the senses and not the mind. The sounds are not there as intelligent music structures, but are rather mediocre transports to different sets of emotions. Layers of sound are added to a repetitive groove on each track, trying one’s patience in this post-jamband world.
Infradig have set up the concept disc in two parts, as its title suggests, apparently representing the dual sides of a vinyl record (as the weird, crackling voice tells us to “turn the record over”). Perhaps the distinction between the sides lies in its attention to procedural recipes for music (side one) versus the expanded, grandiose, and interpretive music attitude (side two). Finally, the cover art tries to shock with its three syringes, yet the attempt comes as overt overkill.
