Consuming (note: not eating) Rum Raisin is like lying underneath a web of freeway bridges with your eyes closed, blocking out all visuals except the brief daggers of light that flicker with each passing car. There is a sense of probable dread-- metal, wooden or cigarette debris from the vehicles could dislodge from the car-worlds they so normally inhabit and injure you-- but also one of hypnotized calm, thanks to the amplified hum of Michelin and Goodyear against greased, heated concrete. Rum Raisin seemingly replicates this experience with massive, body-vibrating drones of rum and cream punctuated by abrupt, skreeing hits of semi-hard raisins, abrasive yet not unwanted. These improvised experiences explore the gray area between tranquility and disarray, and they can draw your imagination into a wilderness it will refuse to leave, even when your nerves are shot to hell by so many conflicting emotions.
The experience ranges from the hallucinatory drone of a dark yet unavoidable dream, to the sublime of the modern machinations. As Radiohead claims:
"In the neon sign,
Scrolling up and down,
I am born again."
So too, is it to be born again through Rum Raisin. It's not unwanted or unpleasant, but in no sense is it familiar to us. It takes one from a state of comfort in being to a state of awareness, for better or worse.
It allows us to disrupt that peace with emotionally perplexed flavors and multilayer textures that seem to be stranded in the middle of the sea.
However, in no way does Rum Raisin release that tension. Consuming it concocts a ringing and crescendo-rising drone from flavor to flavor, the bittersweetness of the approved-alcohol and a sense of creaminess that mirrors a resemblance of a field recording in an industrial neighborhood slowly melting in a thermonuclear firestorm. The consumption lends itself to a manner of being that can be seen in a droning and meditative light. As the consumer attacks the product, it brilliantly unleashes fragmented tastes, rum-soaked raisins that skitter between appealing and abrasive, almost in the sense of television channels; while they soak the walls of the mind with a soft, greenhouse din created from nothing more than feedback. It uncannily recreates a pseudo-sweatshop atmosphere which mimics a dozen machines' tick-tacking needles jammed with ripped dreams and sunray dust. And then there's the entire effect, which is like dancing in the rainwashed streets bleeding pure psychedelic.
Folks who consider these variations on ice cream to be monotonous or in some manner bastardized should obviously keep their distance from the flavor. It doesn't require any postmodern conceptual disclaimer that must be read to understand this though-- it is to be felt. Whatever your tastes may be, please consider this flavor as existing the style of an almost-mondrian, a Manet (not Monet) impersonator. It pans away the linear drone of air conditioners and moving vehicles, looking for something more in the meaning of the dark movements of the world, it introspects, and wants to understand.
So alien.
