Cell-Scape by Melt Banana

Cell-Scape, Melt-Banana's sixth album, arrived in 2003 with the band producing themselves and doing something radical for a noise-rock outfit: cleaning up. Following Teeny Shiny, singer Yasuko Onuki, guitarist Agata and bassist Rika mm' folded in electronics and a hi-fi sheen that makes the racket far easier to walk into.

There's no drummer anywhere on it. The beats were programmed on a drum machine, some patterns modeled on Dave Witte's playing, though whether Witte himself played on any of it is still argued over. The songs stretch out, too, by this band's standards: "Shield for Your Eyes, a Beast in the Well on Your Hand" runs to 4 minutes, Onuki switches to her natural voice for the chorus of "If it is the Deep Sea, I Can See You There", and the record signs off with a 10-minute stretch of ambient electronics unlike anything else they'd done. "Chain-Shot to Have Some Fun" turned up in the animated short Emily and the Baba Yaga.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.