Album Review: Master Boot Record - "Floppy Disk Overdrive"

In these trying times, individuals find comfort in the familiar.  For me, and I’m sure for many others, a good chunk of that comfort comes in the form of music.  So it is that while I am locked in inside, held at an (understandable) arm’s length by my job and society as a whole, I while away the hours by scouring through promos and new music that come into my inbox.

During these days, I hoped to merely find something interesting, and in doing so I stumbled across two revelations – though revelatory for different reasons.  As such, consider this the first part of what is a two part review, with the second chapter to come (on the new release from The Heavy Eyes,) tomorrow.

One of the sublimely pleasing privileges of my meager station as a music reviewer is the unearthing of some new gem.  A heretofore unexplored genre or permutation that the world is yet to fully digest. 

Enter Master Boot Record.  While we here loathe the confining parameters of genre labels, it is a fun game to play in these instances when so many narrow definitions can be turned on their ear in an ultimately futile effort to describe the indescribable.  Master Boot Record, and his debut full-length “Floppy Disk Overdrive,” is both all of and none of a hundred different qualifiers, including electronic, thrash, dramatic, symphonic, industrial and video game.  It is the kind of construction that is clearly built on the premise of ‘what would sound good here?’ as opposed to ‘what progression does my idiom dictate?’  Sometimes, the best words to define music are words that are not exclusive to music – if asked about MBR (for short,) my answer would be ‘energetic’ or ‘oddly captivating.’

A friend of mine, who I had listen to MBR for a second opinion, said it better than I could have, and I’m paraphrasing, but her message was this – if Floppy Disk Overdrive had been released six months ago, I don’t know that I would have liked it.  But with the influx of electronic music into the metal scene, this is something we’re now ready for.

Indeed, much of the album dances with abandon on the line between industrial good taste and over-the-top video game nonsense.  It’s as though KMFDM were performing a cover of “Clash on the Big Bridge” from “Final Fantasy V.”  The music is heavy enough to demand serious attention, but there is a sense of unavoidable…I don’t know, whimsy?  Nostalgia?  Hard to pinpoint a proper term, except to say that it clearly evokes images of the video games my generation grew up on.  As a listener, if you are not attuned to that style already, know that you may have to battle against it in order to see the underlying genius of MBR.

Part of the beauty of this record is that is has stop-on-a-dime changeability.  Due to the keyboard programming, the entire record pounds ahead with a ferocity that human musicians would never be able to match, or sustain.  One imagines this is the kind of thing that Al Jourgensen is talking about when he’s discussed producing music so fast that the beats are indistinguishable.  And yet, as MBR shows in “DISPLAY.SYS,” he can instantly change from a Beethoven symphony played at warp speed to a section with the docility of an unaccompanied string quartet. 

Make no mistake though, the real attraction to “Floppy Disk Overdrive” is the adrenaline factor when the beat really gets going.  The bass is deep and the ‘drums’ are fast and relentless, as though this were the soundtrack to a thousand starfighters having a dogfight.  In the middle of the Crab nebula.  At speeds much faster than light.  Imagine watching all of that, and now tap your foot while it’s happening, and you’ve got the idea.

There are some flaws which should be mentioned for accuracy’s sake.  The album’s first eight songs all sound kinda the same.  Some of them are long, some are medium, some are short, but the album flows in such a way that it’s hard to tell where one ends and another begins.  So as a listener, you might get forty-five minutes in before you realize the track has changed.  That doesn’t diminish the fun of listening to them, but it does mean that if they show up on your music shuffle, you’re going to know it’s an MBR song, but not which one.

Finally, with “SMARTDRV.EXE,” we hear something that shines as a beacon above and beyond its brothers and sisters, but in some small part it captures attention because sections of it sound like an electronic cover of “Master of Puppets.”  Nonetheless, it’s the first ‘Wow!’ moment on the record, and shows MBR’s ability to blend high tones, low tones and measured beats into something beyond just workout fuel.

He extends this trend through the end of the album.  “DISKCOPY.COM” is a slower, more methodical and, dare I say, emotional approach that revels in dramatic effect, while “EMM386.EXE” is the album’s equivalent of that part in the “November Rain” video where Slash rock his righteous guitar solo out front of a dusty chapel with a wind tunnel blowing his hair around.

Pro tip – when listening to this record, don’t try and hear what it would sound like played with the instruments you picture in your head.  I made that mistake the first time through and missed what the album was actually all about. 

“Floppy Disk Overdrive” is a beautiful, fast-paced new thing, unlike just about anything you’ve ever heard and complete unique.  As we mentioned at the top, one of the singular joys of listening to new music, especially when you get buried under as much stuff as Chris and I do, is finding something uncomfortable and new and shiny and different.  Master Boot Record’s debut record is many things, but chief among them is different.  It’s a pleasant reminder that we can experience something novel while partaking in a familiar old hobby.