Dearest Diary,

Everyone likes to skip down to the corner record shop, pocketful of chore money and gaze at the strange, thrilling new titles with the colorful jackets. Oh, what a time we have gazing at the covers that must have come from halfway across the world to excite us in the music shop. And when we select our favorite one from the never-ending stack of delights, handing over the hard-won money from a month's worth of gutter rinsing and pipe-hosing, and take home our prize, there is no warmer satisfaction than to hear the magical melodies from the disc fill our rooms with sweets and light.

But wait, not every record is there for us to enjoy. Some records-- usually the ones with the shifty computer images and decadent coloring-- only deign to scare us. These records, they weren't made to fill our rooms with smilies, but with headaches and contradictions. Why did the record store offer these, when there were plenty of nice records to choose from? I recently brought one by this Brendan Walls home, and let me tell you, it's not something to play for normally happy people. It's full of very angry noises and mechanical screw-ups. Well, it is!

And then, here's what I found out about this Walls character. Apparently, he's from Australia, where I understand people walk on their hands and eat hamburgers for breakfast. It makes sense, because everything about this music seems backwards! Brendan Walls makes his music using only instruments and electronic gadgets that he created himself. So, you won't hear any orchestras or harmonicas on this record. The boy at the record store said that I shouldn't buy this unless I already liked some other weird people like O-to-mo Yoshy-someone, or a lot of guys from Germany who use computers to make songs that sound like they don't know how to make songs. Anyway, Cassia Fistula definitely sounds like he doesn't know how to something right.

The record starts off with the decidedly off-putting "Section One". The man couldn't even think of a decent title, and he's not from Iceland, so you can't say he doesn't know the language. Of course, it wouldn't really matter because it's simply 16 minutes and 48 seconds of computerized burping. I'm sorry, but that's what it sounds like to me. It starts off silent, and then goes right in to the burping drone noise, and only gets louder. At one point near the end, it actually gets so loud I have to turn down my player. I think people should learn to make music that doesn't make you turn down your players. Anyway, once I listened to this, and it made me think of terrible things like my dog Thurber who died one summer when I was away, and also of smashing mother's mirror, so I don't ever want to play it again.

"Section Two" (is he ever going to stop with these titles??) starts out with just a moan, like what I hear when the fish tank battery is going out if I stick my ear right up on it. There's a lot of echo and a little tone sliding up and down, which also kind of reminds me of small fish. If you listen to this, you're going to be confused like me. Sometimes it sounds like those fish are howling, like wolves, and I know that should not be. Why does this Walls boy insist on filling up so much space with spacy sounds? It's nutty if you ask me. But one time I played it when mother was gone, and I was staring at the wall, and it felt like when I was sick and had to take codeine. I think my eyes started having hallucinations, because the wall looked like it was smearing, and I couldn't feel my legs anymore. I guess... well, it was okay.

The last song is the most scary. It's just a big rumbling at first, like being on a plane when everyone else is asleep. It makes my little hairs stand up. As it goes on, it gets louder and louder, and at first I thought my little speakers had given out, but that's really just the way it sounds. The funny thing is, the more I listen to this (I lied, I've played it every day since I got it), the more I find that I'm not as scared as before. I think if I played this for you, you might think I was crazy, but maybe this Walls boy doesn't want to frighten me as much as he just wants me to pay more attention. Oh sticks, mother's home, so I better stop. I don't want her to think I've been listening to records all day.

-Dominique Leone, September 6th, 2002