A Subtle, Cerebral Soundtrack

MUSIC REVIEW: Ryan McNeely

Ryan McNeely’s MySpace page is entitled “Ryan McNeely Eats Animals,” but the links from there to his LastFM radio page and other sites eschew the carnivorous imagery in favor of just the name that I assume his parents gave him.

It is more accurate to call what McNeely does “sound design” than composition. On his first track at MySpace, “The Cloud Song,” we get the sonically-wrangled talking voice overdubs while synthetic drums churn underneath some simple but oddly effective electric piano noodling. It builds up nicely without really going anywhere, and allows you to be and do and think as it provides a subtle, cerebral soundtrack. That is the very definition of good sound design.

You can’t dance to it, but when “The Cloud Song” gets to its last coda, then its final refrain of “I just drove through clouds,” your inner dancer is content to sit and happily tap a toe. This is fungus music — it grows on you — and by the time you get to “Oceanthingwavetypedeal” you are almost used to the theatrical quality of the pieces. “Oceanthing…” boomps and whooshes its way along as you try to get in sync, like speeding up and slowing down on your bike to keep pace with your neighbor’s 11 year-old — but the kid keeps skidding onto lawns so you never do quite match speeds.

When the ride is over, you’re replaying the whole thing in your mind trying to remember any one, concrete, sing-able, finger-snappable moment. There aren’t any. It was a ride, it was music; but it was for then, not now. It’s living music, and if you listen to three minutes of it, you will thereby obtain a soundtrack for those three minutes of your life.

As it’s “experimental” music, writing a few paragraphs à la William Burroughs or Chuck Palahniuk should connect McNeely with the right audience. “I'm going to sing about whatever I want,” McNeely says at his background-busy MySpace domicile, and “the media will not have an opinion on who I should be [and] now that I've finally caught on a little bit to who I am, I'm going to be myself. That is a gift.”

I never did hear McNeely sing much (he squawked effectively a few times), but as I wrapped up my listening session with “Venus Is Bright Tonight” it didn’t matter much. “Venus” is a pleasant pastiche of acoustic guitar and piano plinks, just shy of being sonically impressive, which I attribute to his recording techniques. McNeely may have overdubbed a few “real” parts (voice and guitar, possibly keyboards) but otherwise these sounds could have been designed in Project5, Reason or most any soft-synth software package.

No matter. McNeely’s “fungustunes” are made to live inside your head for just as long as they last. You are not supposed to go away humming a hook. But you may go away hooked, and find yourself returning to McNeely’s music to remind yourself how it felt. Beware, though: It’s going to hear and feel different every time — just like it was designed to.

Published in the July 2006 issue of Freshout Media.