Silver Lining Underwater (Bliss Out, Volume 3) by Orange Cake Mix (Review)

One time, when I was feeling particularly inspired, I decided to start trying to compose electronic music on my Mac. Now, I’ve got no formal musical training aside from a handful of piano and recorder lessons. But I had just gotten caught up in the whole DIY/home recording phenomena. If Flowchart could compose something like Cumulus Mood Twang in the comfort of their home, than darn it all, so could I!

I had it all planned out. I punch a few keys, click the mouse a couple of times, send off a tape or two, and become the next indie-pop legend. As a result, I started downloading different musical programs that, in my naivete, I felt could help me compose the little ambient symphonies running around inside my head. One of the programs I downloaded was a random notes generator. You just entered a few values, hit a button, and it spewed out a series of electronic notes. My reasoning was that, like Autechre, I could take these little blips and bleeps and warp them to do my bidding.

Listening to Silver Lining Underwater (the 3rd installment in Darla’s “Bliss Out” series of ambient pop), I now realize that such a scheme may not have been as rewarding as I once thought. I think someone already beat me to it. So much of this album feels like it was created using random notes and tones. As a result, we end up with 45 minutes of soft-spoken electronic flutterings that rarely ever coalesce into something resembling a song.

It’s like the musical equivalent of that age-old question “If nothing sticks to teflon, how does teflon stick to anything?” Most of the album’s 13 songs feel like that; soft, blurred synths spitting out one series after another of watery notes and tones that slip and slide around each other like so many coloured blobs of oil suspended in water.

For an album that’s part of Darla’s “Bliss Out” series, there’s very little that’s blissful about it. I guess it’s blissful in that there’s really nothing here that’ll make you feel sad. But there’s really not a whole lot on here that’ll make you feel anything. Almost everytime I listened to the entire album, I practically ceased to notice it. The music is so adept at just sinking into the background that after awhile, everything blurs together.

Out of 13 tracks, there are only a few that actually made me take notice. “Streetlights And Stars” is exactly what I wanted to hear on an album described as “Vini Reilly backed by Aphex Twin.” Spidery guitars chime in and fade out over fluttery electronics that sound like the recording of a digital butterfly’s wings. If the entire album had been closer to what that track promised, this review might have had a different tune. “Half-Baked Elegy” sounds like those moody instrumental pieces from David Bowie’s “Low” if they’d been recorded in the TARDIS. “Close To Heaven/Always By Your Side,” with its male and female vocals, almost sounds like a more synthetic version of Color Filter’s breathy techno-pop.

But aside from those 3 tracks, the rest of the album just doesn’t work. I was expecting a lot from Silver Lining Underwater, especially with song titles such as “Like Warm Velvet Static” and “I Honor The Light That Shines Within You.” With song titles like those, how can you go wrong? Apparently you can.

So many good things were hinted at in the music; Boards Of Canada’s brand of analog funk, Bladerunner-esque soundscapes, and underwater journeys rendered in Colecovision, all treated with a dose of indie melancholy. But by the time you make it through all 13 tracks, it just ends up sounding like someone has spent way too much time locked up in their bedroom with a couple of analog synths.