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Cubismo Grafico is a Japanese outfit doing lounge music with loads ofFrench vocals. Released in 1999, this disc is warm album to listenwhile driving around slowly through the city on a hot day with thewindows rolled down. Pretty vocals, drum machines playing sambas,Brazilian-esque acoustic guitars, chimes of vibes or marimbas make itdreamy and cheery. Yippee. I feel like that sloth getting his groovething on from the old Far Side comic. I don't know what it is aboutJapanese lounge fans but there's a pretty girl on the front, loads offemale vocals but only a picture of a Japenese guy on the inside.Fantastic Plastic what? Anyhow it's far better than this year's(not-so) Fantastic Plastic release and you don't own it. Get it andbring it to the beach with you.
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Fucked-up electronic modern exotica, with odd samples, sampled andelectronic drums, random twitters, aircraft sounds, off-key noises andvocals, bizarre collage artwork, and a contribution with the DustBrothers. It's got sitars mixed with 60s-era spy music sounding stuff,crossed with vocal samples about food or sado-masochism. This is easilywhat Add N to (X) would be sound like if they were as cool as theypretend to be. It was released in 1996 by the Dust Bros' Nickel Baglabel out of Los Angeles and Mo Wax in the UK. I found it used andpicked it up on a recommendation. It's rather weird in parts but atevery point, it's quite creative and incredibly enjoyable. Half ofSukia is two guys named Craig and Ross, now known as DJ Me DJ You withrecords on Emperor Norton. The album's titled was inspired by a Mexicancomic book about a lesbian vampire and her well-hung cohort, GarySupermacho. Make sense now?
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So while there's this movie out now called "the Songcatcher" by somelady who found it necessary to exploit music of the Appalacians, thisCD does a good job of exploiting Cambodian rock music. It's a 70-minute22-song collection of late 60s/early 70s pop songs brought back fromthis guy's trip to Cambodia. Whatta trip it is - these songs (whichimitate popular western-world music of the late 60s) sound like that'veaged much better than stuff that would imitate popular music of today.There's absolutely no track listing, however, no idea who's doing what,but some record label in NYC seems to be making money off of it. No,it's really fun, but completely sketchy.
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While we patiently await another full-lengther from 606, the materialfrom the Mille Plateaux release from last year gets treated on this fundisc. While it's not as campy as his latest live experiences where 606butchers Missy Elliot or the "Sandwiches" song, it is entertaining withcontributions from Matmos (originally on the Twirl EP) who remix aphoto shoot/interview with Miguel himself. Atom TM's contribution is agoofy butt-shaker, Pan American patient piece sounds like upbeat PanAmerican stuff, Twerk is fucking cool and I hope to get their new albumsoon, and the rest (which even include some 606 tweaks) have much morepersonality than the original album in its original form. 606 hasprobably gained more respect in the artful critic circle with his moreintrospective releases but it's really incredible to hear him let loose.
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If you like dub and own no Twilight Circus then you're a fucking tool.Ryan Moore has delivered an astounding number of albums over the lastfew years exploring the sound of old school (late 70s/early 80s)organic instrumental dub. This is the real shit, not dub-style glitchylaptop stuff, but a real person playing the drums, bass, guitar andorgan. While the albums don't evolve in style, Moore is most certainlysteadily evolving in the production and writing aspects. Volcanic Dubis 12 new dub tunes, 45 minutes of bliss. This edition is less amake-out album as the other releases but is no less wonderful. It'sindeed volcanic, baby.
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This group, who isn't a trio and released their second full-lengther onDrag City in the USA last year is allegedly a side project of popstersThe Notwist. I say alleged since they've been releasing more asT&TT than as The Notwist lately. Anyhow this album does it right -with five well-developed tracks, totalling about 43 minutes. The musicis entirely instrumental, jazzy-flavored with horn instruments andpiano sounds, but beat oriented with hints of glitch and dub and muchmore complete than last year's album or the remixes which were out latelast year from Morr in Germany. I was rather cold to the disc when Ifirst got it, but it has grown to become my favorite release from thiscrew, mellow while creatively involved, beat happy and musicallyplayful enough with a load of TLC and strong efforts focused on only asmall amount of top-notch tunes.
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There's two types of people reading this electronic magazine: those who have heard of Neu! and those who actually own the bootleg CDs. If you're one of those who have heard of them and claim you don't know their music, you're most likely already familiar with their sound as it can be heard quite clearly in Stereolab, Echoboy, Legendary Pink Dots, Einsturzende Neubauten, Nurse With Wound, OOIOO, Couch, OMD, Wire, even early Smashing Pumpkins and the Blue Man Group, etc,... After two decades of compact disc technology, the timeless original three studio albums are finally officially available on CD. For those who own either the boots or the original LPs (heh), the treatment on these issues is well worth the wait.
Like any genre-defining musical term, at first 'Kraut Rock' got tagged to groups who shared members and ideals, but over time it became an overused catch phrase. (Consider other sub-rock genres like post-rock, math-rock, industrial, techno, gunge and how much Front 242 have in common with Throbbing Gristle!) It wasn't so much what similarities the original Krauts had with their music, but the similarities of what was absent: during the 60s and 70s chart-toppers like Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones, the Beatles, Cream and Elvis Presley were all ripping off black rhythm and blues singers, while Krauts like Can, Kraftwerk, Faust and Amon Duul stayed far away, with a soul-less, almost faceless exploration of psychedelics and technology, tone poems, Stockhausen and Moog synths. The term Krautrock soon became the tag to anything both German and rock oriented, Xhol Caravan for example completely embraces soul elements and emotive singing.
The eponymous debut is probably my favorite: the duo established their sound and developed it into six legendary, solid tunes of varying lengths into a wonderful 45 minutes. It was punchy beats, wakka-wakka rhythm guitars and backwards tape-manipulated long humming lead guitars experimenting with both consonance and dissonance, faceless and distant. Listening, it's easy to start singing Stereolab's "Jenny Ondioline" or "Simple Headphone Mind" and if you're new to Neu!, it hits you this predates the 'Lab over 20 years.
The follow-up, '2' however wastes a chunk of time playing with their records on different speeds. "Super" gets the treatment at 16, 45 and 78 (hmm, ever hear of the Duophonic Super 45's label?) '75' comes in a good second as they expanded their sound to include piano melodies and encompass beauty without compromising their edge. By now the group, now a quartet, have become able to do some soul bearing and quiet reflection while still keeping a decent amount of distance from stadium-rock wankery. While a swirly guitar and flange effect begins to creep into a very dated sound of the 1970s, the influence of a song like "Seeland" can be heard clear as day in Neubauten's "Stella Maris" from 1996, Trans Am's "Motr" from 1997, and even Macha/Bedhead's "Hey Goodbye" from 2000!
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For those of you who own the bootlegs and are wondering if the upgrade is worth it, there are noticeable differences to consider. The overall sound of the reissues is much brighter and a lot of subtle nuances are more perceptible: voices and instruments are now apparent that weren't before.
There is a greater dimension to the sound than the relatively-flat bootlegs. Of course, the price for greater clarity of the original analog source material means some audible hiss in spots, but I think the improved quality otherwise outweighs this minor annoyance. The new CDs also offer more music on each disc — about 20 seconds apiece for the first and third albums, and 41 seconds for Neu! 2. Some of this disparity can be be attributed to the fact that the bootlegs were taken from inadequate source (I have heard they were made from the best vinyl copies available). In remastering, Neu! brought back in some skips and pauses that had been errantly "fixed" for the bootlegs. Some tracks are also broken slightly different than on the bootlegs. As for the packaging, it's slightly more aesthetically pleasing than the bootlegs, and borrows a bit from the big foldouts that accompany Dinger's releases on the Captain Trip label. And although the promo material promises "new liner notes," don't expect any further insight into the music itself. Having owned the bootleg versions for several years, I can say that the quality of the official reissues is definitely worth the investment.
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Some call it skank rock. I call it lo-fi fucked-up laidback slackerrock. And it's brilliant. The Moldy Peaches are the best band you'venever heard. This album made me elated beyond all hope of coming back.It was a journey I'll gladly repeat if I should ever find my way home.Like the lo-fi Belle and Sebastian, Kimya Dawson and Adam Green craftjuvenile songs that are strangely catchy with great melodies andtwisted lyrics. And they're fun-filled, too! Mostly acoustic guitar anddrums with vocal trading and intertwining between Dawson and Green, allbadly recorded with lots of static, the Moldy Peaches' album ischock-full of youthful exuberance, adolescent angst, and bizarrehappenings. Songs end abruptly because the recording just stops. It'sjust a strange listen. There's even a ridiculous rap moment. And theycover "Little Bunny Foo Foo." It's just plain great. Often I laughed,because of the ridiculousness of the lyrics, but it's all incredible.It's a bit like the car accident you can't help looking at, but moreentertaining. There's really not much more to examine than that, thoughpsychologists would have a field day with those lyrics. Here's asample, from the album opener "Lucky Number Nine": "Bloody Mary Motherof God/Grampa's on the hobby horse again/Dampened broken pantschaffing/I'm running out of ethnic friends." Even when they approachoffensive material, like on "Downloading Porn With Davo," it just comesoff sounding like people singing about things just to try and provoke aresponse, or nonsensical gibberish set to music. Either way, you'lllove the result. If you don't, then who cares? These burgers are crazy.
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Teutonic riotmaster Alec Empire rears his ugly head again on thisrelease, throwing down a new bag of tricks far removed from his bestknown work as titular head of teen-noise-pop-sensations Atari TeenageRiot. Here he dips into a grab bag pastiche of studio tricks to producea 62-minute slab of chunky hip-hop beats, some atypical noise guitarand the vocal stylings of MC El-P. Then again, since this release is 12mixes of the same song, it's better geared towards completists and DJ'sthan the general consumer public. The track itself is hard hitting asexpected - funky, menacing keyboards reminiscent of ATR's 'Waves ofDisaster', a nice cold feeling permeates this track even asunidentified electronic squee warms the brain and much head bobbing isinduced. The other tracks are all variations on this one theme:'Accapella mix', 'Hard Beats', 'Hard Beats and Voice' - you get theidea. The only real remix here would be the excellent 'No Wave Mix' - asubdued bit of tone generations, casio-style drums and squiggly 404action; and the 'Black Moon Mix' which is an excellent fucking mess -both of which would be great for those 3AM crank burnouts I'm sureyou're so fond of. Released in both the UK and the US so buy domestic.
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Newcomer Mitchell Akiyama is the first release of Alien8's newsub-label, Substractif. On this, his first 'proper' album release, theMontreal-based Akiyama has assembled a library of field recordings, andprovided a complimentary score, at times with sampled, rhytmically andtonally restructured manipulations of the recordings. It's an excercisein a laptop-driven ambient dub soup, and at times the sounds have beenso far removed from their original state, that the toil in the processis almost entirely unnoticable. Don't take that the wrong way, however,it's a wonderful disc which has certainly grown on me incredibly. Thereisn't a piece of work on this album that doesn't take a fair amount oftime to evolve, however, so patience is essential to a listening.Akiyama is another case for my argument that greatness in electronicmusic can come from a understanding of organic music and composition,in that he allegedly comes from a jazz background. 'Hope' could easilybe like what a Pole album would sound like if Stefan Betke changed someof the stinking preset sounds for every track. It plays mind tricks ontracks like "Concentrate On One Leg" when the established beat breaksup at random places while a hypnotising throbbing tone never backsdown. Its unobtrusive beats, lengthy delays and a keen sense ofcomposition combine to make for a charming listen late at night withthe lights off and windows open while a cool breeze passes through onoccasion.
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