Madeline Darby – What Is Love?

Artist: Madeline Darby
Title: What Is Love?
Keywords: experimental cassette electronic industrial minimal synth noise tape label North Carolina
Format: digital / tape
Label: Tribe Tapes

What is love? Baby don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me – no more.

Madeline Darby has taken the difficult task to reclaim this question without the whole baby don’t hurt me part. Madeline Darby does this by naming a very out there, ‘eccentric album’ after these three words followed by the question-mark. An album that has seemingly experimental electronic music inside, material that comes within every track as a surprise, yet somehow oddly waving all of these surprises nicely together in their creative web of weirdness. You will be the confused spider waggling around in order to understand and explain this all. Maybe there is nothing to understand, maybe it just is what it is; a reason to boggle the mind by feeding it the abstract and the bizarre?

There are a words too, so if that’s love, than the question is probably answered within all of this , especially when we hear the track that is somewhere placed in the middle of it all, one that is also titled ‘what is love?’ As what else than this, could love be? Are you confused? Trust me you might not be the only one! Love is confusing…

“What is love? Is it something that is created?” Madeline Darby asks within it all & my obvious response (as a looney listener) is of course to say YES! It is created by Madeline Darby.

As to me ‘what is love?’ is simply this nicely done peculiar album created by the question asker and sound explorer Madeline Darby. The artist itself who functions as a personal goddess right here, creating something of a unconventional release that feels like the green sign to place Madeline Darby on a special pedestal of content creators whom is free from rules and regulations . Poetic and abstract Madeline Darby’s sounds are mingled and screwed, delivering more reasons to question things than possible answers, but all in all it’s a entertaining show. As Madeline Darby shouts militantly to follow the line it’s simply an demand you really shouldn’t refuse as this all might be cuckoo, it truly is interesting too.

We at yikis like to toss the honourable title of ‘artist’ towards everyone who made it onto our humble blog, but in the case of these weirdo experiments in which Madeline Darby’s voice is tripping out on the answering machine while delivering bizarre but fun happenings from one after another, it is fair to say that Madeline Darby comes across as a artist that deserves the title of being a true artist just a bit more than everybody else. I mean this release is art, ‘what is love?’ It’s freaking art! You can’t grasp it and that’s it!

It’s like looking at a collection of art pieces in a private show, things that you are intrigued by but maybe do not fully understand, yet you can’t let that be noticed as you stroke your chin among other convinced art lovers that do seem to know what’s going on. But trust me, they probably do too have no idea, but they certainly look more trained to not to appear baffled. I can only say that I like it, it’s strange, freaky, and to be fair; pretty fascinating. Just like love…?

It’s Music, different and apart, whimsical, strangely menacing like a disturbed persona trapped in the electric wires of a delirious matrix, that is something what I think, one in which this artist wobbles around within, while exploring noises, electric freakeries and a certain characteristic taste that seems to wave a kind middle finger to the established norms and rules of how music should be done and played. Is it punk? Is it poetry? Is it noise? Is it love? It’s ‘what is love?!

With the including of short ‘songs’ on this quirky album, it’s as if Madeline Darby is the kind of bam bam person who can channel the concept of being a human ghost box who is willingly receiving the craziest after life personas to star into these audio sculptures. Did I hear the spirit of Tobetta777 in there too? Some of them are easy to digest and even danceable, with cool rhythms to follow and others are simply unusual and probably thought provoking. Personally I might have become non the wiser, but did feel thoroughly entertained. Is it music, is it noise, lasers from outer space? Is it love? It’s intriguing and amusing and you can bewilder yourself with this curious case of art over at the following link, probably giving you hours of investigative listens.
https://tribetapes.bandcamp.com/album/what-is-love
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