Well, I just excoriated Ladykiller [previous review] for synthing up their voicework, and now I'm praising Ram Samudrala for doing the same thing. Ram is much more economic in his voice synthing, and it tends to complement the synthy nature of the tunes - with Ladykiller it seemed more in opposition to the rest of the song. "Tick in my Head" is Ram's tribute to Ween, and, in my opinion, the best song on the tape. "Noises" is convincingly psychotic in a Crazy World of Arthur Brown soft of way. "Don't You Believe in Me?" has the best rhythm tracking of the 8 songs on the tape, though the lyrics aren't too hot. The oddest song on the tape is "Lynno and Reeno", which might make more sense if I knew the women it was about (Lynn and 'reen [my guess: her real name is Maureen]). But when you write lyrics like: "There's a girl called Lynnoleum, I love her like the love the smell of petroleum", you have to expect to alienate some of your listeners. Ram, if you're gonna write love songs to women, you might want to write individual songs about each of them. Overall, a decent effort. Though the voice synthing helped the music, I think Ram tried to put a little too much gimmick into a lot of songs. 6 of 10.
Hoxhacult is published by Steve Stenslie.