"PLANET'S MAD" by Baauer: Chaotic Heart Attack Fuel Under the Jungle Canopy
If you listen to Planet’s Mad by Baauer high,
wear a seatbelt.
What kind of music makes you want to fight, dance, and do the sex all at once?
Baauer music.
I listen to Baauer and think, this is what’s listened to by the coolest kid in the high school parking lot, as he hums through in his yellow Honda Civic with a bright purple spoiler. Or the Bauuer remix of “In Cold Blood” by Alt-J. This is what plays when a man stands on a shoreline with a baseball bat, ready to fight an incoming tsunami.
I honestly don’t know which songs are truly Baauer’s on Spotify because he’s been featured on everything. EVERYTHING. Something will pop on – I’ll check the artist, and it’s like, “Bob Dylan – Rough and Rowdy Ways…featuring the eclectic drum and bass tinges of Baauer”.
Well, Bauuer dropped his second feature-length album on the 19th, “PLANET’S MAD”, and I must say, it’s…well I haven’t listened to it yet. That’s what we’re here for.
Like the Gaga review and the Man Man (we’re getting the hang of this now), this is a real-time reaction, no prior research. Because I want to reflect on the feeling the album evokes in real-time, not write a thousand words on the memory of an album that I organized into a carefully devised narrative.
The Youtube video is the visual insanity that is the movie for “PLANET’S MAD”. You can watch it then look for the nearest Zendo tent, or drink down the review first. Sound good?
Headphones in. BASS UP. Enjoy.
Track 1 – PLANCK
I don’t know what a PLANCK is but it sounds like a wooden bristle spoon old Puritan women used to brush their children’s teeth. Let’s just listen to the song.
The first 50 seconds is what you hear when you enter a room full of ninjas in slow motion. They have swords and you have half a broken broomstick and a mean Tom Hardy look in your eye. The beat drops and you get that heavy trap bass dramatic synthwave. The Baauer sound.
Track 2 – PLANET’S MAD
Angry guitars and pulsing synth bursts, like flashbangs in your face. No way this song doesn’t make its way into a fight scene in Fast and the Furious 25. PLANET’S MAD could have played during any scene in Mad Max: Fury Road. Catch the theme here? It’s cinematic. Mad cinema.
Track 3 – MAGIC
We get a lot of this angry stomp-your-face trap beat, but then interludes of ethereal calm. Heavy distortion. What you hear in a post-apocalyptic societal collapse dreamscape. Is Baauer making political statements without any lyrics?
Track 4 – YEHOO
The buildups are tuh-die-for. I heard this style on “Temple”, a gasoline fire of creativity with M.I.A. and G-dragon where he sampled jungle ambient sounds. The influence is here – manic beat with a wild melee of bird noises in the back. This is what Tarzan has on in his earbud headphones.
Track 5 – PIZZAWALA
More jungle stuff. I did not watch the accompanying music movie until after I finished the initial review, but see the below picture for the Baauer imagining of what Jungle rave music looks like:
That’s not at all something that would traumatize a grown man.
Track 6 – REACHUPDONTSTOP
1:03 – Just gorgeous ambience layered in to the first song with lyrics. It’s like sweaty dancing in the club at 4 a.m. and somebody taps Brian Eno on the shoulder and says “here, add sad nostalgia to this cocaine stomp.”
Track 7 – HOT 44
Hard trance thump. Unrelenting, driving beat, and then ambient noise. I say “noise” because it sounds industrial. The literal lyrics to the song are repetitions of “Rhythm – Sound”. There are moments in each song trying to escape into an atmospheric ambiance, but he remains tethered to the beat.
Track 8 – AETHER
So easy to classify this song. It’s definitely Jungle Breakbeat Industrial Trap Hard Dub Grime-step with Bassnectar vibes. Way to be completely unoriginal, Baauer.
Track 9 – COOL ONE SEVEN ONE
The beat is so thick and heavy – this is the song that breaks the speakers in your mom’s 1997 minivan and you drive around town with the doors shaking.
Track 10 – REMINA
Just a minute of solid ambient sound – no beat. It’s the comedown. The exhaled breath from extended chaos.
Track 11 – HOME
Four songs were released as singles from this album (so far) – “PLANET’S MAD”, “AETHER”, “MAGIC”, AND “REACHUPDONTSTOP”. I inform you of this to say that “HOME” sounds the most radio-friendly of all of them, and I’m surprised it’s not a single. Maybe that’s exactly why it’s not a single.
Track 12 – GROUP
More mania. Shreds of shrill vocal samples with the dirty, distorted beat. We trail out to a pocket of beautiful calm.
If I had to Sigmund Freud this bitch, I’d say this could be a projection of a life – chaos emotions and chaos schedule mingled with breaks of recuperative calm.
“PLANET’S MAD” by Bauuer is…
one dose of hard chaos and music to get high to in the jungle canopy.
That’s the cryptic way of saying “go listen, but don’t be surprised if you end the album naked and sweating.”
Edit: Upon seeing the accompanying movie, we revise our review to say, this is most definitely…