So, recently I received a package in the mail from “Bosue Recordz”. Someone apparently made the mistake of sending me a CD, “Playing Her Guitar Suite,” with really poorly produced and arranged music on it to review. I’m not quite sure why they did this. They cited my previous opinion features on the VMAs and stuff like that. If they bothered to read them, it would have been immediately apparent that my reviews weren’t exactly nice or anything, so I’m really confused as to why they’d ask me out of all the people on the Black and White staff.

Another member of the newspaper staff who was desperately trying to procrastinate discovered some interesting things about the band.  The people in the band don’t exist. The whole thing is kind of weird; there’s no one for me to contact or respond to. They didn’t even respond to my tweet on their imaginary band leader’s twitter (although to be fair, most people don’t). Besides the fact that none of the band members are actually real people (although this one is pretty glaringly obvious), the company–for all intents and purposes-does not actually exist. I couldn’t find any of the record label’s management on social networking, either.

The self-professed record company was also were kind enough to send me a letter about the CD. The contents of the letter were pretty interesting at first. “In September 2013, four young musicians began a journey–traveling through a portal where space, time, and music intersect.” Five minutes later I listened to the CD and discovered that this journey must have been pretty uneventful, because their music is about as thought-provoking as the average tumblr post.

I mean, it’s not THAT bad. The CD is designed to look like a record, which is kind of neat. There’s a decently well drawn comic that was supposed to explain the events behind the creation of the CD (which didn’t make any sense at all but that’s OK). Unfortunately, the band, “Rip ‘N Time” managed to produce a total of three incredibly inspired tracks…all of which sound basically the same. The music is interesting for a minute or so, and is pretty ambient. The band website describes their music as “dreamy metal”. Which is pretty wrong. It’s definitely not metal, especially since the letter says it’s “jangle pop”. These are all genres I’m not familiar with. In fact, I’m not even sure if they exist.

Basically, every track blends together in a sort of uneventful 18 minutes. The letter they sent me describes the first track, “Playing Her Guitar” as as “sensitive vocal–enhanced by lush cascading choral harmonies and shimmering, sparkling, jingle-jangly guitars”. Most of this isn’t correct. The song definitely is “vocal” and has “guitar”. I don’t really understand the whole shimmering sparkling thing. In all, it’s not that bad, but doesn’t really live up to the hype. With a description like that, I expected to enjoy it.

This goes on for the remaining two tracks. “Twisting Road” and “Suite Dream” sound practically the same, except with slightly different arrangements. The second track lasts a whole eight minutes, described as “dreamy…with mostly bluesy guitar solos” and some other stuff. It wasn’t really anything special, either. If “Rip ‘N Time” was Santa Claus, then children around the country would be super sad because they don’t have that many gifts.

For a CD that is described as “lush”, “dreamy”, and “symphonic” by this band’s PR, I’d expect something that would at least be slightly enjoyable. Of course, as I previously said, it’s not like it makes my ears bleed when I listen to it, it’s just that everything sounds kind of bland while trying really hard to not be. If the band was a breakfast, it’d be oatmeal, albeit oatmeal mixed with trace amounts of psychoactive ingredients. In the words of an unnamed newspaper editor, “This sounds like something you’d listen to if you were high.”

In the words of Bosue Recordz (you know they’re legit because they spell records with a z”), “You alone can complete the journey by bringing Playing Her Guitar Suite and The Black and White readership together.” Although they’re cool and all, I honestly don’t think anything I wrote or could possibly write would make people actually interested in this.

To sum it up, this was a pretty mild experience. It was kind of like sleeping through Kinder’s APUSH lectures or listening to students attempt to intelligently discuss issues in government.

…I’m not quite sure what else to say, so I guess we’re done here.