BUCKETHEAD — Pike 98 - Pilot (review)

BUCKETHEAD — Pike 98 - Pilot album cover

Album · 2014 · Non-Metal

4/5 · 2016-12-07
siLLy puPPy

BUCKETHEAD - PIKE 98 - PILOT 57th album out of 60 in 2014 and 127th overall All sounds brought to you by Buckethead and all instrumental This one clocks in at 29:14 and has nine tracks All tracks are titled “Pilot”

“Pilot 1” (2:51) begins with a startling electronic buzz followed by funk guitar and then funk bass. The time sigs change it up and it sounds like a 70s p-funk track trying to battle it out with Kraftwerk or something. While the guitar and bass do their funk thang, electronic whizzing and hyperactive drums come into the picture as do strange freaky sounds. The bass changes it up often with different types of funk lines and the guitar and other accoutrements follow suit. The track continues to change things up often in the most avant-garde of ways. Really freaky but mostly funky!

“Pilot 2” (2:59) continues without missing a beat and begins with a water drip and more industrial noises that irregularly march forth with off-kilter time sigs and then a freaky electro-funk synth turns into terrifying and horrific weird noises over an industrial drone sound. Enter the funk once again with dissonant trebly tones and then more weirdness. Random and jarring that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Ministry album

“Pilot 3” (3:25) more synth funk for ya with slightly off guitar parts but quickly becomes spooky ambient down tempo with industrial sounds coming at ya randomly but they vanish and are replaced by funky bass and cheesy drum machine. Then they disappear and it becomes spooky ambience again. A subdued guitar joins in with a monotonous strum and then a brash turntable type of scratchy groove. This one is just plain wwweeeiiiiiirrrddd!!!

“Pilot 4” (3:21) begins with a demented piano, keyboards, strange noises that create strange rhythms. Very avant-garde but turns to a more funk style for a while and then a freaky ambient meets tortured guitar part. Picks up a bouncy freaky groove only in full weird zone and then the groove breaks down into proggy time sig frenzy while the bass tries to be funky. It keeps going changing things up often and in a million directions. More wild and totally unpredictable stuff

“Pilot 5” (5:06) has a very strange background while a clean guitar delivers a somewhat normal soft melody and then totally displaced by a funky bass and drums. After the funk struts its stuff for a while it becomes a weird church bell type of ambience briefly and then starts another weird guitar meets industrial synth and changes up dynamics as well as time sig breakdowns occurring. Once again. This one is all over the friggin’ map and only gets weirder and wilder creating sounds that i can’t even describe really

“Pilot 6” (3:42) at this point there’s really no meaningful use for tracks. It is imperceptible as to which track is which and ideas whiz by so quickly that no song structures exist at all although the snippets of ideas are based in a general musical genre but some things are just so experimental that their is no vernacular capable of capturing their weirdness. Funk still alternates with industrial and whatever the whim of the chicken lover has in store

“Pilot 7” (3:07) actually bursts into something new. No, it’s still weird and wild but it has dissonant guitar chords with dystopian ambient synthesizers that sound like possessed church organs. It continues changing things up often in totally unforeseen directions and continues to ratchet up the mayhem by making everything ever more alienating and jarring to the ears. Even the guitars and bass are totally in their own world only to join in together briefly in horrifying ways and then back to total musical breakdowns

“Pilot 8” (2:00) is different in that it is soft with a normal clean guitar line and freaky hyper electronica in the background. It also has a sort of funk meets industrial thing going on but changes things up often and steers the instruments in disparate directions

“Pilot 9” (2:43) is exclusively a freaky ambience track that feels more like early Klaus Schulze but a clean guitar finds its way into the lost soul department and creates a detached echoey contribution to the swirling sounds around it. A violin sound joins in and then all ends

Wow! This album is a true trip. It is one of the most wild and unexpected pieces of free style experimental rock there is to be heard. BH has done a few of these and this one is truly one for the most uninhibited musical listeners who love those rides at the amusement park that move in multiple directions while on a roller coaster. You have to be quick to stay on this BH ride or you might lose you lunch and ruin your freshly cleaned clothing. Weird for weird’s sake. Wild for wild’s most unimaginable journey. This is truly one of the most bizarre slices of avant-garde music ever. No metal on this ride but lots of funk, ambience and even the kitchen sink!