The old five-point scale has been retired in favor of just rating stuff 1-10, which allows me a much more nuanced final rating. Still don't take it that seriously. Most of these come from my own collection, so the grades skew rather high. Your results may vary if you send me stuff to review.

Each album is given three Essential tracks, my personal favorites, regardless of how weird and inconsequential they are. The Quintessential pick is the one I think best represents the album as a whole, so you can try one song instead of a whole album of songs. Non-Essential picks range from merely disappointing to outright unlistenable.

c.layne

[#] Drawing Shapes With Sounds (2004)

Ugly, twisted, world-battered, but somehow comforting.

Reviewed May 30, 2025

This is a PSA from me to you: reach out to your favorite indie artists and let them know that you want their unreleased stuff online so you can talk about it on your website. c.layne's not too big on a lot of his older work, which has led to some of these being in the vault for almost two decades now. I've been listening to copies he gave me some years back, but yes, I am why you can now check out Drawing Shapes With Sounds. I get it. This is an ugly, weird album, the vocals thin and the production effectively a less dreamy version of what was going on with Antonymic. This is not for everyone—but it's in that strangeness and darkness that c.layne conjures up that, even if Drawing Shapes isn't a better album than Antonymic, it's at its best a worthy companion of it.

Where Antonymic is a largely harmonious warm sonic sunspot, Drawing Shapes With Sounds is dissonant, built of backwards collages, feedback squalls, detuned bridges, ring modulators, and head voice vocal takes that seem more than a little concerned with that whole war thing that was happening at the time. It's right around the instrumental "Keep Away" that the weight seems to come off a little, a little less downcast and certainly less oppressive. "Show Me a Fire" conjures that comforting guitar-led Antonymic balladry, "The Devil and a Woman" looks forward to the more rhythm-heavy Memes, and "9/6" is a desolate waltz to bring the mood back down. By no means a good introduction to c.layne, but it'll keep the right kinda isolated freak (me) good company.

Essential:	"Hello My Name is Hello", "Show Me a Fire", "9/6"
Quintessential:	"Lumberjacks as Janitors"
Non-Essential:	"Tylox and Apple Juice"
Rating:
Further listening:	Stream from c.layne's SoundCloud