Mouth Silence


Mouth Silence is the second mashup album by American musician and comedian Neil Cicierega. Following the format of his previous release, Mouth Sounds, the album is composed of mashups and remixes of popular songs from the 1980s, 1990's, and 2000's. Unlike Mouth Sounds, which used the song "All Star" by Smash Mouth as a recurring element, no tracks on Mouth Silence explicitly reference Smash Mouth. On the album's cover, Cicierega can be seen giving a silence gesture in the shape of an L, referencing a lyric in "All Star". Also on the cover, a screenshot of Hampton The Hampster's "Hampster Dance" can be seen on Cicierega's glasses, referencing the remixed lyrics in "Goodbye" and the song's samples in "Piss". A third installment, Mouth Moods, was released in 2017.

Reception

Much like its predecessor, Mouth Sounds, critics remarked on the album's simultaneous appeal to and perversion of the listener's nostalgia, with Katie Rife of The A.V. Club describing it as "laugh out loud horrifying" and Ryan Manning of The Verge promising that listeners would "have a strong reaction, negative, positive, horrified, glorified". Sasha Geffen, writing for Impose Magazine, describes the effect as "total context collapse", calling it "paradoxically comforting". As of January 11, 2019, the album has received over 660,000 plays on Soundcloud.

Track listing

In addition, multiple tracks are embedded with clips from Smash Mouth's "All Star" that are slowed down by a factor of 1728%. The song lyrics are sung in the octave below Middle C, making those notes lower than the range of human hearing. To hear the clips in their original key, the music must be sped up by factor of 1728%.

Outtakes

On 19 October 2014, the YouTube channel "NeilCicieregaMusic" uploaded three outtakes from Mouth Silence.