There’s a feeling most of us experienced as a kid where we just go completely crazy and spin around in circles. It’s an uninhibited chaos of childhood that takes hold of us and we just go nuts.
Imagine you’re spinning around in the grass, disregarding all cares, just a moment of unbridled energy mixed with a sense of freeing yourself.
Now take that feeling and combine it with the feeling you had by slamming as much sugar you possibly can stuff in your mouth before anyone stopped you.
That, in retrospect, short burst of liberating energy is precisely what Van Goose has managed to capture in Habitual Eater.
The Israeli-born Shlomi Lavie, drummer for Marcy Playground, is releasing his debut album that is exponentially more enjoyable than sex or candy from 22 years ago.
Loose bass bleed into funky grooves that ricochet off electronic curtains of energetic, accent-laced lyrics which settle comfortably into the “did he just say he laid an egg on Mike Myers” and “what the hell just happened and why do I love it so much?” Through eight, frenzied tracks Van Goose builds a seemingly audible kinetic energy that, should you pause, skip, or stop any portion of Habitual Eater, you won’t be able to get it out of your body.
Debut albums take on all shapes and forms, they can be experimental, they could play it safe. There is nothing safe about Habitual Eater. Where Lavie stretches out and takes a chance is where he succeeds. His quirky electronic vibes (Quirktronic?) are bold enough to be noticed, but they mesh well enough to be enjoyed, in copious quantity. Beyond my comprehension of the finite complexities that went into the building of this record, Van Goose packs an immense volume of creativity into a tightly packed that should not be defined by genre labels. Sorry, Quirktronic is as much as you’ll get out of me. Even as the record unwinds on closer “Wildstar”, despite it’s more mellow tones, Habitual Eater cannot escape it’s wonderland of vivid sounds.
Van Goose’s Habitual Eater harnesses a large amount of energy and focuses it into a finely executed debut record that stretches the imagination in all the right angles leaving us with residually palatable energy we’ll be dabbling in for some time to come. Similar to those energetic spurts we so craved in our youth, let go, be free, and spin with Habitual Eater.
Greg is a co-founder and regular contributor of Nanobot Rock.