Album Review: Blink The Star - 11235 EP

I’ve managed to hang onto my copy of August Everywhere by Blinker The Star since I bought it back in 1999. Never have I considered putting in the ‘trade in’ pile when I’m trying to trim the fat of my CD collection and never have I thought about putting it down in the basement with the ‘B Squad’ records we don’t listen to as much—it’s been filed prominently with the B’s since day one.

I heard about Blinker The Star—specifically that album—due to its loose association with Ken Andews, the guitarist and singer for Failure. In the early days of the internet, once I found out Failure had broken up, I tried my hardest to get my hands on anything members of the band were involved in. As it turned out, Andrews produced August Everywhere, and Failure’s drummer, Kellii Scott, was behind the kit.

Cut to 16 years later—and Blinker The Star is still a relatively active project helmed by Jordon Zadorozny. He released August’s synth driven follow up in 2003, then took nearly ten years in between releases before returning with the magnificent We Draw Lines, an album I just recently discovered.

Zadorozny returned recently with his first new Blinker The Star release in nearly three years, the cumbersomely titled 11235 EP.

The thing about this project is that Zadorozny has never grown comfortable with a specific sound or style—it’s always been a bit of a restless creative outlet for him. August Everywhere, in a sense, captured an accessible and very specific moment for him—the moment I just so chose to start paying attention to the band. There are two very rough, unfocused records that arrived prior to this that are both very unfortunate products of their time.

That August Everywhere sound is where he tends to work the best—or at least the best for my ears. So unfortunately the 11235 EP arrives as not so much a disappointment, but as a bit of an inaccessible, or at least a frustrating listen.

Opening with a bit of a false start in the form of an intro track, the EP really begins with the rollicking, punky “Century of The Self,” which is probably one of the effort’s strongest, most enjoyable moments.

I think the problem I’m having with this EP is that there is just a lot going on in these songs—but not in a good, multi-layered way. Like in a “hot mess” kind of way. Like “Wolf Eyes Through The Smoke”—it’s got big, listenable moments, but it also has crunchy guitars and drum machine snare hits that sound like they belong in another song—just the whole thing, production wise, lacks focus on just what kind of song it wants to be.

The effort’s most perplexing track is its closing song, the instrumental “Ride a Dragon Upon St. George”—a song that begins like an ominous instrumental that is headed toward something big, but abruptly switches into a pop punk blast.

11235 is self released via Zadorozny’s Bandcamp page—a service that has gone through a pretty drastic change since I last used it regularly. What is up with this guilt trip on trying to make people buy something after you’ve streamed it once on a computer?

Look, I get in these days of Spotify paying artists fractions of a penny for streaming music, people gotta get paid or whatever—but this is just kind of laughable. I don’t want to open my heart and wallet to something that I am streaming a second time to confirm, for review purposes, that I just flat out didn’t like.

The bright side of this puzzling release is that Zadorozny is still making music under the Blinker The Star moniker. The downside is that in all his sonic restlessness, this underbaked, pop punk aesthetic is what he’s settled on for the time being.

11235 is out now.