Wound Up By God or the Devil

Although described as a side project for Freezepop's Kasson Crooker (aka the Duke of Pannekoeken), the Symbion Project in fact existed before Freezepop. While the Boston-based Freezepop were formed in 1999, producer, composer, arranger, and programmer Crooker started Symbion in the early '90s and produced Symbion's first full-length album, Red, in 1997. But thanks to Splashdown (the group that Crooker was in from 1996-2001) and Freezepop, Symbion has — as Crooker put it — "long simmered in the background." Those who associate Crooker with Freezepop might be surprised to hear that Symbion doesn't sound anything like Freezepop; both favor an electronic, synthesizer-driven approach, but that's where the similarity ends. While Freezepop's albums have been largely defined by Liz Enthusiasm's lead vocals, Wound Up by God or the Devil is strictly instrumental — and while Freezepop's humorous, very ironic output recalls '80s new wave and synth pop acts like Berlin, Thomas Dolby, Duran Duran, Soft Cell, and the Human League, this 2007 release offers hard to categorize electronica that draws on a variety of influences, among them ambient music, Vangelis, Brian Eno, Tangerine Dream, European classical music (one of the tracks was inspired by the work of Johann Sebastian Bach), and European film music. Symbion, unlike Freezepop, doesn't favor a traditional verse/chorus/verse/chorus format — and the quirky, artsy material on this 64-minute CD has all kinds of interesting twists and turns. As a result, Wound Up by God or the Devil doesn't have the immediacy of a Freezepop release — which is to be expected because Symbion is a totally different animal. This is the type of disc that reveals more and more of its charms with each listen, and it is an intriguing, well-constructed example of what Crooker has to offer outside of Freezepop.