Music Album Review – Captain Lo –Fi Soothsayer and the White Worm

In around the early month of December 2014, through just a simple announcement on social media, John Caing of Bombo Pluto Ova fame released his first solo album. The album was a 3-disc home-recorded music called “Captain Lo-Fi Soothsayer and the White Worm”. The album is available for free download mediafire.

Captain Lo –Fi Soothsayer and the White Worm is a 3 disc album that contains raw guitar riffs by John Caing. It’s a song that features no lyrics or well arranged songs. It is just that- raw guitar riffs with titles.

Quite frankly, I still am not sure if the album should be taken seriously or not. If the whole thing was a joke, then you don’t need to read this article but if we take it seriously then the album deserves to be talked about because it does raises a lot of questions.

First of all, if he was serious about it, why did John Caing released this riffs which you are suppose to keep? At a songwriter’s standpoint he could have finished this riffs into completely arranged songs and released it as a predictable solo album would sound like.

But he did not, so is he giving this guitar riffs away then for some other artists to finish into songs? If somebody did use it without the artist’s permission, would he care? Would he be mad or even recognize it, that the stolen riff came from his solo album?

I am thinking this way because frankly, a lot of the raw riffs in this album do sound promising. One example is the blues-sounding Look at the Sky Ships. The guitar riff had potential. It even has a raw arrangement already that just needs polishing. Then Cinematography reminds me of a ballad from The Beatles. Humaniform Robot dance as the title suggest is a riff that sounds like a robot dance. Thus, this too had potential.

Then if he was joking, then what’s with the song titles? Are they placed there because the titles coincided with the songs or they are there because the titles just sounded cool? Or was it a little bit of both? Then the sequence of the songs, was there effort to this one or was it just done spontaneously?

Captain Lo –Fi Soothsayer and the White Worm is an album with a simple idea. You record your raw guitar riffs and release it without much care if they are finish or original. But it is a simple idea with a risk, because you might end up releasing something that somebody could make gold out off in the future. You are releasing song ideas without patents.

Very few songwriters would have the balls to take this risks. Songwriters like John Caing showed us that his got the big balls to do it. Now is there a sophomore solo album coming out? Now that would be interesting.

About the author: N.M. CABANGBANG graduated Bachelor of Fine Arts Major in Painting at University of the Philippines Cebu. He is now currently teaching grade 6 – 10 Art at B.R.I.G.H.T. Academy.