Casiotone For The Painfully Alone
Answer Machine Music
Owen Ashworth is, in my view, an overlooked genius, deserving of the highest echelons of acclaim and reverence. Unfortunately he seems destined to skulk along the outskirts of public consciousness, much to the public's loss.
Casiotone For The Painfully Alone is his solo project, and you realise the aptitude of the name after only one listen of this 1999 debut. Answer Machine Music is stark, intimate, raw and strangely ethereal. Literally utilising only a casio keyboard and drum machine, Ashworth delves deep into the human condition with tales of moribund, day to day occurences, swathed under the glow of the melancholic midnight moon. Loneliness, alienation, aspiration and despondancy are all prevalent features of the piece, told to the tune of twinkling casio parts exuding atmosphere and mood as confrontaitonal, 80's drumbeats propel the songs forward.
Interspersed with the poignancy of the lyrics is a wry humour that effectively connotes the mundaness of what Ashworth is documenting. Yet, conversely, he has the fantastic ability to conjure up a magical sentimentality, freezing the most intimate, persoinal instances of human existence like the capture of a still, black and white photograph.
If you like your music to be deeply affecting and personal, this will surely titillate. It's an album so raw and rudementary in one way, yet so melodious and beautifully atmospheric at the same time. With songs that sound like they've come from an answering machine, i defy anybody that doesnt in some way identify with what this genius of a songwriter is saying.
Do it.