End democracy Now! Is it music or is it art ? Let's clear a few things up here:-
Hurn (noun) - an annoying monotonous noise.
Hurnish (adj.) - A noise which is irritating and tedious. An aimless racket.
Jesus fucking christ, the Pierres Henry and Schaeffer, Stockhausen and Penderecki were peddling this sort of tosh in the fifties when at least it was new. So why, David Hurn, would you think we would want to listen to this badly executed, blandly meandering ordure, that suffers the added handicap of your music hanging between it's extremeties like a spare cock?
Sonic art has never been any good, we all know that, but it's easier than writing music and a lot more fun to do than listen to. So why have you recorded this awful stuff onto CD?
'Other people just appear' begins with a three minute wade through chopped up noises of the most tediously suggestive variety before DH's extemely boring monotone voice chirps up. The song is so bad that I have to keep stopping the CD to take a rest. DH has a voice that's a blend of Albarn and Coxon without the interest and a 5 note range - The lyrics are far too wordy, in fact the whole thing lacks of economy but still fails to convey any a single jot of meaning, emotion or interest to the audient. 6 Minutes later the aurul fug drags itself into life again and more 'random' sounds, chosen to manipulate some message from a complete lack meaning, fail to engage the listener.The reason I have a problem with this Oh-So-Kerrazy cut and paste 'music' is that the various aural hyperbole are used to imply a depth and significance which is actually absent in the work. And It doesn't help when the auteur seems to take himself so dreadfully seriously - Please! A break from the earnestness already.
His EP starts with 'How I came to hate my Saviour' - an interesting title yet, listening to the whole song (for it is a song this time) is a Herculean task. Resiting my urge to throw the CD out of the window is almost too much. 'Frosk' is more epically pretentious sonic-art tosh and a waste of heartbeats and by the final track 'Oh poland' I am getting sick f DH's insipid voice. This EP is like a very unmusical Sparklehorse without the fun or humour. I'd rather listen to david gray. The problem is that there is a lack of content at the core of this work, which means that i don't care and don't want to listen to the end.
Only the most esoteric of the cogniscenti could regard this as any good - it just belongs to the hugely distended, cancerous colon of unremarkably dreadful post-modern crap.
The democratisation of the arts through cheap technology is filling the world with a smog of self important ear-trash. Please, can the self-obsessed behave more responsibly and keep this sort of stuff to themselves. It may be helping the artist but it's so staggeringly dull that, like James Blunt, it makes me want to hurt people. And I don't want to hurt people.
Ultimately the real problem with David Hurn is that he's a bad sonic artist with songwriting pretensions and a bad songwriter with arty pretensions, but is it music or is it art? Trying to present both of these starnds together as one oeuvre makes each look half-arsed and amateurish. Proper effort to either might yield something with a fragment of soul or emotion (or whatever DH is trying to present). On the strength of this release I would say 'Move along there's nothing to see here'.
David Hurn official website
