siLLy puPPy PIKE 184 - 23 DAYS TIL HALLOWEEN: WAX is the 83rd album released by BUCKETHEAD in 2015 and the 9th installment in the countdown to HALLOWEEN. This is yet another spooky dark ambient work that is guaranteed to scare the crap outa ya. BUCKETHEAD performs all sounds heard on the album and this one clocks in at 18 seconds over the 30 minute mark. This one has only two long tracks called “Wax.” Part two takes up 2/3 of the album. They run together so it’s basically one long trip down troller coaster.

This album starts out with weird echoey space noises. It sounds like i’m in a corn silo or something with a reverberator turned up to capture and amplify the echoes. It subsides and then a deep stringed instrument plucks a few notes and then more weird electronic noises. This one sounds more like it could be astral plane music or something as it feels like there’s a stream of sound where certain ones make their presence more known as the listener floats past. In other words this is beyond lysergic trippiness.

While it’s impossible to convey this type of sonic stew in a review, it is possible to tell you if i like it. Some of these dark ambient albums are utterly brilliant in their diversity and arrangements of sounds and then some like this one are just a little underwhelming in how they don’t go anywhere. This one has lots of repetitive sounds while some of the other HALLOWEEN PIKES throw things out super fast. I prefer those. This one isn’t bad by any means but it isn’t holding my interest. More of a dark mediative horror album to go to a yoga class dressed as ghouls. This one is cold and distant but not as scary and conducive to HALLOWEEN as previous offerings.