"
About is Rutger Hoedemaekers," reads a legend in the CD digipak for
About's first album,
Bongo, on which Hoedemaekers reportedly spent the better part of three years. That effort brought him just over 32-minutes' worth of electronic pop, on which the sounds can be noisy but sometimes give way to a tuba and sousaphone duet (which is what happens on "Friends Applaud, The Comedy Is Over"). Hoedemaekers uses editing as an element of composition, suddenly cutting from one rhythm and set of sounds to another, sometimes so suddenly and repeatedly that the listener may think the CD player is on the fritz or the disc is defective. He also adds quirky lyrics that match the ear-catching, if ever-changing music. This is undeniably entertaining music, and undeniably gimmicky, but by the end, it fails to be much more than a novelty. ~ William Ruhlmann