What does it mean to be "experimental" in music? Markus Popp of Oval had a great interview where he decried the use of the word to describe his work. He said, in effect, that his music contained no experiment whatsoever, that instead it represented a very precise and exacting process. It seems that when we say "experimental," we usually mean either abstract, without fixed pitch, melody or beats, or just plain weird. Whether or not the musician was "experimenting" on the record seems of little consequence.

By any definition, it would appear that Van Oehlen is an experimental (or, as they would have it, eggsperimental) outfit. Their music is abstract and seemingly composed on the fly, with everything about it suggesting lab-coated artists tinkering in the studio. When it comes to how much you'll enjoy this cracked album, you must ask yourself how much is too much. For my part, I enjoy bizarre electronic music and require no rhythm; I've long since grown accustomed to ugliness from my hi-fi system, and I can extract organic joy from a cold mound of machine music. And yet, sometimes-- as with this record-- music can be random and chaotic in a way that means nothing to me.

Though most of the sounds and textures on We are Eggsperienced come from synthesizer banks and PowerBooks (there are a handful of tracks with live drums), the whole sounds improvised, like men (not machines) subject to the workings of some clumsy inner algorithm. "Intro (of the Damned)" sets the tone with a processed circus organ chopped and grated into a festering mass of tuneless atmosphere. "The In Kraut" pairs cheap acoustic drums banging out a numbingly repetitive beat with ugly, effect-laden guitars hacking out some counterpoint. "Conneggtion" offers the first glimmer of beauty, with warm digital squiggles dancing merrily about, while "Hare Krishna" returns to uncertainty, sounding like two minutes of a tone generator tuning itself up. On the nastier end of the spectrum is "The Mask," which combines a heavy four-on-the-floor beat with grating Moogs reminiscent of Add N to X.

"Hitrocking" is probably the most immediately engaging track, a hilarious exercise in cyborg blues, with a relaxed voice coaxing the machines to do their thing with lines like, "Yeah, that's it, that's hitrocking." But despite these scattered moments of levity, on the whole Van Oehlen fail to draw the listener in with compelling sounds or orchestrations, and we wind up with what strikes me as 40+ minutes of digital noodling. Or, if you like, "experimentation."

-Mark Richard-San