Nobody Knows

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Aside from being a master of the alias, Uwe Schmidt (a.k.a. Atom, Atom Heart, Lassigue Bendthaus, Senior Coconut, Geez 'n' Gosh, and many more...) is a master of mingling snaps, crackles, pops, and other assorted sounds among more traditional musical ideas; each Schmidt pseudonym reveals digitally embedded gradations of sound and style. Under his most popular aliases Schmidt has recorded Latino infused Kraftwerk renditions, vocoded click-happy pop covers, and Chilean inspired electro-glitch jazz. 'Geez 'n' Gosh,' the moniker reserved for his 'click house' tunes, presently provides glitch happy fans with eleven Atom-adapted African-American gospel songs. Though a bizarre collection, followers should have been tipped off by last year's 'My Life with Jesus.'

How in the gods' names you ask does the Reverend Geez pull it off without sounding cheesy or even worse, preachy? By being devilishly subtle. The actual 'gospel' aspects of 'Nobody Knows' are processed, cut-up, and most importantly, sparse. Each and every vocal seems to be sampled - seemingly from a dirty old transistor radio tuned to an AM gospel station somewhere in America's deep south. The samples involved are mere snips of the full vocals, giving the tunes celestial flavor without sounding anything like actual 'songs.' 'Pray,' a tune sufficiently representative of the entire record, provides proverbial Atom glitch, processed prayer, some soothing echoy keys, and a heavenly bit-hop breakdown. The echoy keys emerge throughout the album, but most notably on 'I'm determined (Jesus changed my soul)' which also includes a zealous vocal sample determinedly wailing about the singer's soul.

By marrying glitch and gospel, Geez & Gosh ultimately emphasizes 'noise' already present in the old gospel recordings. That said, 'Nobody Knows' would certainly be more intriguing if the 'noise' aspects were not so familiar. If you own music from other Atom glitch projects, you will recognize the sonic elements herein. A plethora of clicks-n-pops work as the rhythmic element while understated keyboard tones float in the background. Adding the gospel element imparts an interesting stratum but by no means breaks new sonic ground. Still, this is a divine addition to the genera, and besides, it's about time y'all click-heads got ya'self some church.

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