Applied Communications' 'Bites the Big One' Is a Glorious One-Man Pile-Up of Ney Flutes and Bad Decisions
Applied Communications was dormant for twenty years. Then a TikTok influencer sent people to archive.org and eBay hunting Max Wood’s old records, he revived the project in 2024, and now there is a new full-length — nine tracks, all lowercase, no producer, mixer or studio credited anywhere. Wood is the sole writer and performer, and bites the big one sounds exactly like one person’s unsupervised hard drive.
The Sonic Breakdown
The Production & Mix
The Low-End: There isn’t a single low-end approach, which is the point. Bandcamp Daily’s Luke Jackson, naming it Album of the Day, catalogued the ingredients: “you can expect to hear songs featuring Arabic ney flutes, calypso drums, and lyrical subject matter that ricochets between Claire’s Accessories and Disney villains.” “return of jafar” rides a bossa nova beat. “butcher” finds its groove in what Jackson calls “clacking lounge percussion that calls to mind an experiment Matmos might cook up on a rainy day.”
The Spatial Dynamics: Wood, as Jackson puts it, “builds whiplash into his transitions” — a production choice, not an accident. The sharpest edit is the handoff from “butcher” into “gracie mansion comfort zone,” which “bursts into a caterwauling spiral of free-associated lyrics, guitar plucking, and an unhinged chorus in which Wood sings over a Blondie sample, placing the listener at the epicenter of a coworker karaoke session from hell.”
Standout Performance
Max Wood, by default and by merit — he plays and sings everything here. Jackson is funny and fair about the voice: “at full belt there is a sense that he’s shooting for Steve Albini and landing on Liam Lynch. Nevertheless… Wood’s vocals complete the bit.”
Why It’s Certified
Because it uses the production craft Wood has rebuilt since 2024 to hyper-focus on detail rather than polish. He describes lead track “donna deegan” — about Jacksonville, the city he left over twenty years ago and, he told Dork, “still think about it every day” — as “a glitched-out, hypomanic 8-bit pop song about being an anxious, alienated kid in a deeply flawed, deeply endearing southern city.” Jackson’s verdict is the invitation: it “is a scrapbook of ideas that invites you to pick at its seams.”
Start at “donna deegan.” Let the whiplash happen.