The Day of the Robot

The first decade of Buckethead-related activity is highly variable as far as genre, mood, and instrumentation are concerned. As I for the most part don’t listen to electronic music (outside of the various Buckethead albums that fall within the sphere), I’m without a proper frame of reference to trace the influence that resulted in his curious third album, Day of the Robot. Suffice it to say, its DJ-powered sound is mostly incompatible with much of his later discography and its cold circuitry may come as a shock to casual newcomers that merely glimpse the bucket and mask on the cover and expect his more traditionally-styled metal riffs, progressive melodies, or funktastic grooves.

Despite this, the opening “Destroyer” medley is one of the most noteworthy experimental pieces in Buckethead’s repertoire, slowly mutating from abrasive industrial metal to an ambient trip-hop groove over the course of its thirteen minute runtime, with some heavy distorted chugging in the middle and foreboding clean lines reminiscent of those whole-tone riffs Robert Fripp was so fond of during King Crimson’s 90’s-00’s era, though greatly simplified. The first few minutes are the best though, featuring dissonant tremolo lines and a punishing drum machine backbeat that’s extremely crude and shitty sounding, thus heightening its discordant affect. An album’s worth would probably be draining, but it works well in the context of this particular leg of the journey.

Despite kicking off with quite the stunner, the rest of the album descends into harsh bass-and-drum techno with the guitar tracks functioning in synthesizer-esque support roles, creating spacey sound effects, rhythmic layering, and providing the occasional obtuse solo. Soundscape beat-breaks, chaotic piano accompaniment (with lots of menacing, random sounding banging throughout “Quantum Crash”), heavenly synth swells as counterpoint; it’s all rather fascinating for a little while, but begins to dull as the album draws closer to conclusion. While preferably to the house, rave, and dubstep music it would eventually evolve into, old-school 90’s techno still ain’t really my thang, you see. It’s too static: the tempo is unchanging, the sound is harsh without the heavy guitars I so desperately crave, and in this particular case, the basic tone of the songs is unchanging while the harmonies are entirely atonal and improvised/irrelevant.

For me at least, Day of the Robot doesn’t bode well for active listening due to its repetitive nature (it’s closer to pure techno than it is to any other genre), but I’ll admit it’s quite the unsettling ride and is certainly more interesting than some of Buckethead’s other experimental works, such as the noise-scapes released under the Death Cube K pseudonym.

But fans of The Dust Brothers or something will probably enjoy this more than the average Buckethead fan will.