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The Ramm:Ell:Zee, "This Is What You Made Me"
Tri-Eight Recordings
As it turns out, Bi-Conicals of the Rammellzeeisn't the guy's first full-length: Tri-Eight squeezed out two editionsand an instrumental version of this one late last year, though it lookslike the two albums were recorded more or less concurrently. Gomma,however, appears to have gotten the better pile of tapes out of thedeal, as the variety of producers on Bi-Conicals provides arange of sounds that is sorely lacking from DJ Kensei's beatwork here.Instead, the Japanese hip-hop and house maestro puts together aframework of synth noises that you probably heard too much of duringWax Trax!'s heyday, and while there's nothing much wrong with the MeatBeat bleeping of "Soldiers" or the KMFDM-style riffage on "I BeRamm:Ell:Zee:Zee", their familiarity draws attention to how thin andrepetitive some of the mixes are; a similar problem comes up when thevocals are so drenched in effects that they're practicallyunintelligible. Meanwhile, Ramm's usual style of delivery, a berserkmatching up of broken and rejigged cliches with surreal streetnarrative, succumbs to what I hope is just lousy improvising on "In theBack of the Caddy Shack", saddling an almost funky backing track with apathetic, and largely one-sided, conversation with a twenty-dollarwhore. In still other cases, relatively solid tracks are derailed byidiotic choruses or painful samples. With bad production decisions allaround, only a couple of cuts manage to avoid feeling twice as long asthey need to be: the title track's energetic (and only slightlyprocessed) vocals don't hew too closely to the simple and heavy mainrhythm, but they fit well with the anthemic chorus, and "New Meaning"opens the disc with some fun gurgling sounds and some of the mostmelodic vocoder work I've heard in a while. Even so, right on down tothe guest guitarists, everybody on this album has done betterelsewhere.
As it turns out, Bi-Conicals of the Rammellzeeisn't the guy's first full-length: Tri-Eight squeezed out two editionsand an instrumental version of this one late last year, though it lookslike the two albums were recorded more or less concurrently. Gomma,however, appears to have gotten the better pile of tapes out of thedeal, as the variety of producers on Bi-Conicals provides arange of sounds that is sorely lacking from DJ Kensei's beatwork here.Instead, the Japanese hip-hop and house maestro puts together aframework of synth noises that you probably heard too much of duringWax Trax!'s heyday, and while there's nothing much wrong with the MeatBeat bleeping of "Soldiers" or the KMFDM-style riffage on "I BeRamm:Ell:Zee:Zee", their familiarity draws attention to how thin andrepetitive some of the mixes are; a similar problem comes up when thevocals are so drenched in effects that they're practicallyunintelligible. Meanwhile, Ramm's usual style of delivery, a berserkmatching up of broken and rejigged cliches with surreal streetnarrative, succumbs to what I hope is just lousy improvising on "In theBack of the Caddy Shack", saddling an almost funky backing track with apathetic, and largely one-sided, conversation with a twenty-dollarwhore. In still other cases, relatively solid tracks are derailed byidiotic choruses or painful samples. With bad production decisions allaround, only a couple of cuts manage to avoid feeling twice as long asthey need to be: the title track's energetic (and only slightlyprocessed) vocals don't hew too closely to the simple and heavy mainrhythm, but they fit well with the anthemic chorus, and "New Meaning"opens the disc with some fun gurgling sounds and some of the mostmelodic vocoder work I've heard in a while. Even so, right on down tothe guest guitarists, everybody on this album has done betterelsewhere.
