| Cryptooology | ||||
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| Studio album by | ||||
| Released | October 5, 2004 | |||
| Recorded | 2004 | |||
| Studio | Penny Studios, St. Louis, Missouri | |||
| Genre | ||||
| Length | 29:58 | |||
| Label | Skin Graft | |||
| Yowie chronology | ||||
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Cryptooology is the debut studio album by American experimental rock band Yowie, released by Skin Graft Records on October 5, 2004. A band of two guitarists and a drummer, Yowie recorded the album earlier that year at a studio in their hometown of St. Louis, Missouri. The trio wrote and refined the album's seven instrumental songs through four years of rehearsal, devoting close attention to every part of their music—even segments that were only a few seconds long. The resulting music represents an extreme, technically demanding vein of math rock that avoids conventions of songwriting like melody or repetition. Though the band's playing sounds chaotic or disorienting, it is not improvised.
Critics have variously compared the album's unusual sound to free jazz; to recordings by such experimental bands as Ruins, U.S. Maple, DNA, and Mars; and to the compositions of Carl W. Stalling, who wrote scores for Looney Tunes. Cryptooology has received praise for its musical complexity and stylistic radicalism, but even positive reviews typically caution that the album is liable to strike listeners as ugly or baffling. While the band regretted the record's lackluster audio quality, they continued to play rewritten versions of songs from the album at live shows.