The Oregon-based, mostly-instrumental duo Why I Must Be Careful makes a hip mishmash of music it cryptically dubs "Umami-Sharpnelist/Art-Punk-Collage" — which on its debut release Honeycomb essentially means "let's make whatever the hell kind of off-kilter noise we want, as long as it sounds as if it were created by loutish children who sniffed too much glue at daycare." Then there's the smugness factor, which tends to detract from the music: Seth Brown (Rhodes electronic piano and voice) and John Niekrasz (drum, cymbal and voice) have decided to issue Honeycomb as a limited-edition vinyl-only release that retails for $200.
Of course, this isn't any old slab of vinyl. As Why I Must Be Careful's website explains: "The packaging for this 100-copy, vinyl-only release is a unique art piece all of its own. Each of the limited-edition albums is housed in a handmade wooden frame that has spent enough time inside of a beehive for a colony to form their iconic honeycomb structures on either side of the record. The result is a one-of-a-kind beeswax sculpture as secreted from the wax glands of, and organized by, thousands of honeybees. Demanding its own place away from your other LPs, perhaps even on the wall, this honeycombed album is under consideration by the Olfactory Art Council for Best Smelling Album of the Year. Seeking the respect of blind culture, Why I Must Be Careful is providing a Braille chapbook
as part of this release. The textured booklet is dappled with lyrical structures and notations of the two long-form songs on the Honeycomb album."
Why I Must Be Careful is being so careful about this release that no one even bothered to share with us the titles of the two songs it will feature. All we got was a CDR with untitled 17-and-a-half-minute and 19-minute tracks, a DIY black-and-white CD cover and a smart-ass press release. Jazzy percussion clashes with what sound like old Casio keyboards in a playful, sometimes melodic but ultimately annoying barrage of rambunctious experimentation. This certainly isn't for everyone, which may be why the vinyl run is limited to 100 copies. But give the two dudes in Why I Must Be Careful credit for doing something that must be entirely pleasing to themselves.
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