Album Review: Jeremy Sauer’s Taker Cuisine
Coming almost four years after his debut and marking the one-year anniversary of major distribution, Jeremy Sauer’s Taker Cuisine is a terrible fucking album that builds on a discography of complete shit. Exploring themes of food gathering in agricultural societies is a stupid concept for a musical project. Nevertheless, Sauer’s uniquely terrible musical style somehow manages to make that terrible concept into an album that pushes the limits of how bad music can be.
The introductory track to the album, fittingly titled “Introduction: Cooked to Temp,” is seven fucking minutes long, making it the second longest track on the album. What was he thinking? Admittedly, the song starts with almost thirty seconds of near silence that all listeners will find themselves looking back fondly upon. As the composition progresses, first into an out-of-tune cacophony reminiscent of a pipe organ destroyed in an arson attack playing “All Star” by Smash Mouth, then into a gray mass of noise marked by the sounds of a fire alarm, listeners will find themselves thrust into the pain of the concept of agriculturalism.
“Trichloroethylene” and “Cream” offer no respite from the mind searing agony inflicted by the introductory track, as Sauer presents the plight of toxic waste contamination and its role in preventing foraging in post-industrial agricultural societies. Compositionally, the synthesis of jazz and the French house of Daft Punk’s Discovery doesn’t fucking come close to working.
At this point, the album’s most disturbing track comes in the form of “Story of Enkidu.” Alluding to the Epic of Gilgamesh, a notorious polemic against early agriculturalism from the cradle of Taker civilization, “Story of Enkidu” makes all who would live off the fruits of irrigation question their life choices. The initial hardcore punk quickly breaks down into a post-musical wall of pain characterized by glitches and atonal synthesizers. This subsides into a ballad presented by an unnamed Spanish singer-songwriter who describes the allure of agriculture. But listeners are not fooled, as the instrumental backing creates a sense of horror that communicates the inevitable ecological devastation that characterizes Western agricultural society.
Following “Story of Enkidu,” one may hope that they have gotten past the worst of the album, but “Can you hear me??”’ shameless pastiche of The Caretaker’s Everywhere at the End of Time dispels those hopes. While the heavenly choir sings with the voice of the life destroyed in the ecocidal death march of agriculture, many listeners may be overcome with despair.
When at last the song is over, there is no rest before the low effort distorted swells of bass move the audience into the next song, “All You Need is Fries.” Luckily, this track is a limited break from the fucking musical disaster that the previous compositions have been. Swirling subbase and ethereal strings are complemented by deconstructed triangle hits that move in aerobatic harmony with the rest of the mix. Yet all that is good must end, and as the composition reaches its most harmonious, it is mercilessly interrupted by walls of distortion even more obnoxious than the ones that opened the track.
The following two tracks are bland wastes of time, but don’t let that get your hopes up, both tracks are nauseating, much like the products of industrial agriculture. Somehow, when audiences arrive at “Squash Medley (Live),” the album sinks to new fucking depths of musical hell. In a performance informed by ska, electropop, and swiss yodeling, Sauer presents a mess of styles whose blend most closely resembles a meal after being chewed and vomited. This is undoubtedly the peak of the album’s insult to music, and the following three tracks flow by in a state of numb resignation to the aural molestation presented in the preceding half hour of “music.”
There is a light at the end of the tunnel, however, as “Something About the Pork” offers an innovative and expressive composition that synthesizes styles from across the pioneers of modern music. Airy pads, hazy piano riffs, and a tasteful guitar solo all merge to create a discordance with the idea that the slaughter of intelligent and self-aware animals is integral to the industrialized agricultural death machine of “Taker Cuisine.” But Sauer’s originality can’t last, and he ends the album on a blatant rip-off of the harsh noise of the band Low.
Overall, “Taker Cuisine” is a terrible fucking album that must be avoided by all listeners who value their sanity. Despite its devotion to the theme of agriculturalism, a disorganized mix of influences and ideas create a composition that is abhorrent to the concept of music, and thus a fitting addition to the discography of a failed musician like Jeremy Sauer.