This selection was made by Gen Z son.

Gen X dad says… Neil Cicierega is a lot of things – Internet artist, comedian, actor, filmmaker, musician, singer, puppeteer, and animator. Just to name a few. He originally released a series of albums under the name Lemon Demon starting in 2003. In 2014 he started releasing mashup albums under his own name. Mouth Silence is his second mashup collection.

The mashup genre reminds me a lot of the crude (both in terms of content and sound quality) little tape experiments I made with friends in the late 70s and early 80s on cassette. You know the thing where you “bounce” tracks back and forth between two boomboxes.

Ages ago I told my girlfriend at time that I wanted to listen all music at once. At the time I probably thought I was saying something important. Alcohol was involved so I was more likely a bit drunk and a bunch stupid. But, that comment came back to me while listening through Mouth Silence.

Cicierega mixes up music from dozens of artists along with sound clips on Mouth Silence. Everything from NIN to the Fraggle Rock theme are mashed up into a nearly hour-long blitz of sound. Some of the bits are recognizable. Others are warped and manipulated beyond recognition. You can check out the full list on Wikipedia here.

It would be easy to dismiss something like Mouth Silence as another iteration of plunderphonics. But, there’s a real artistry to what Cicierega’s created. An hour’s worth is a bit much to get through. While some of the tracks go on longer than works, the morphing of the source material back and forth never gets dull.

The most interesting aspect of Mouth Silence though is that you can enjoy it either actively or passively. At least I can. Maybe that’s a reflection of how accustomed I’ve become to the constant deluge of sounds across media these days.

Some highlights – Love Psych (which mixes up the B-52’s Love Shack with music from Psycho), Orgonon Gurlz (Kate Bush’s Cloudbusting and Katy Perry’s California Girls), and What Is It (which speeds up Faith No More’s Epic to match up with War’s Low Rider).

Gen Z son says… While I’m definitely not a scientist, if I could tell you one thing that I think is a fact, it’s that almost everyone has used the internet at least once in their lives. There’s no doubting we’ve all used the seemingly limitless invention for something, whether it was to look up directions to the grocery store, or to buy tickets to a concert, or to communicate using apps like Skype or Discord (which we’re all doing right now in these trying times).

It’s also a pretty big thing on the internet to share your original creations with everyone, whether those creations are original animations, art, or reviews, like this one. While you could just go on Twitter every day to harass and troll random people, most people online have made a living off of creating original content. There’s no doubt that any millennial could remember when YouTube was just a small little platform for people to post their adventures at the San Diego Zoo or their vacation to some foreign country. If you’re Neil Cicierega, however, you create an animated music video about Godzilla fighting Batman and other well-known figures and publish it on Newgrounds instead.

This video was The Ultimate Showdown Of Ultimate Destiny, which launched Lemon Demon, a musical project founded by Cicierega in order to release even more legendary songs, like the always-favored Two Trucks and the well-recognized, but unknown in terms of artist and title Brodyquest.

After creating essentially the whole internet, you’d be wondering what Neil would go and pull off next with his solo career. So what does he do? He creates two mashup albums and releases them to the public for all to hear: Mouth Sounds, the one we’re reviewing today: Mouth Silence.

Let’s go into the music itself. This record fits into what you’d call the “plunderphonics” genre, which has some well-known albums in it as well. There’s no doubt that after hearing DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing….. for the first time that one would be blown away by one’s ability to take multiple existing songs and combine them all to make a legendary album loved by hip-hop fans and music critics alike.

While one would normally sample from Ultimate Breaks And Beats or some old record they found in the used section, Mouth Silence instead uses songs by very well-known acts: Nine Inch Nails, Hanson, Marvin Gaye, Third Eye Blind, and others are all present here. What’s impressive though isn’t just the amount of artists on display – it’s Neil’s ability to find a connection between seemingly unconnected songs and merge them into one (see Crocodile Chop).

Another factor is Neil’s unavoidable sense of humor – this album also finds a connection with the people that keep the internet weird. There’s the self-explanatory intro to Sexual Lion King, The unexpected geniuses of Wndrwll and Love Psych (Happy Halloween, by the way), and the somewhat Avalanches-esque Numbers. Not to mention the multiple Easter eggs (spoiler: they all include Smash Mouth’s All Star), the little “found sounds” sprinkled in (see Furries), and the clever interludes.

Overall: both hilarious and genius, Mouth Silence is definitely an impressive and unique album. Whether you’ve got a sense of humor, or you’re a fan of the sampled songs yourself, or both, you’ll probably find something worthwhile in it.