Mylo - Destroy Rock & Roll (2004)

So who is Mylo? I'm not sure I've ever heard of him/her/them. But the idea that anyone in 2004 thought they could destroy rock and roll, despite decades of failure by others, is quite audacious of Mylo. Just please don't be rap or dance. I'll even take country if it means I don't have to listen to rap or dance.

The albums opens with a new-age synthesizer instrumental. If you listen carefully you can hear some vocoded lyrics, or rather people saying "Dah dah dahdah dah." And that's it, rock and roll is officially DESTROYED!!! ... as long as destroying rock and roll is synonymous with playing easy-listening new age music. Seriously, I was expecting something a bit more intense than this. I'm watching a music video on YouTube for the second song "Sunworshipper" and it's mostly stock footage of clouds and flowers blooming. Oh, and it features spoken-word lyrics thusly:

"Well this is to solve all my problems to get out of drugs. I had enough of that. I've had the college, I've had the earning the money, and the material trip. I just decided I was going to find a new way of life, and so I took off on my bicycle. Well this is to solve all my problems to get out of drugs. I had enough of that. I've had the college, I've had the earning the money, and the material trip. I just decided I was going to find a new way of life, and so I took off on my bicycle..."

And it does repeat a few more times, but I think I might have worn out that joke a bit.

I'm going to start banging my head against my desk every time one of these kinds of albums come up in the rotation. I get it that a list of 1,001 albums you must hear before you die needs to be all inclusive, but surely it didn't need as many crappy techno/dance albums as it has had thus far. Destroy Rock & Roll is pretty sad in that it's somewhat mellow in spite of its title, and many of the synth sounds used are from late-80s video games.

The title track is another techno crapfest that lists off a bunch of unrelated artists, I suppose most of whom would be considered part of rock and roll. For some reason the list starts skipping at Duran Duran and The Missing Persons and just repeats those names over and over for a little while, before running through the whole list again. Also for some reason Michael Jackson is named once as a solo artist, then again as... a duo with Paul McCartney?

So I had to look it up because what the fuck is this crap? Apparently the song samples a recording from the Church Universal and Triumphant which is called "Invocation for Judgement Against and Destruction of Rock Music". So that's kinda funny I guess. Looks like Mylo wasn't claiming his album would be a destruction of rock and roll, but was rather poking fun at an obscure cult. Still, it's tough to ignore that poking fun at a group intent on destroying rock and roll should probably not be done using a form of music that is an insult to rock and roll.

One positive note- The songs tend to be relatively short by techno standards, some in the 3-minute range, instead of the 8-minute monstrosities I was recently subjected to from Roni Size. The music isn't actually better, but smaller pieces of crap are more appreciated than their larger siblings. Given the choice of shitty dance albums I'd probably listen to Destroy Rock & Roll first. That's something I guess to Mylo's credit. 2 stars.