Wait! Don’t get scared off by the inclusion of remixes by usual suspects Styrofoam, Herrmann & Kleine, Opiate, Dntel, Turner and Isan. While they issue plenty of worthwhile music with alarming frequency on their own, here they’re given a substantial challenge in the source music of Giardini Di Miro. The aforementioned artists, plus Nitrada and errorEncountered, layer the intrigue with echoes of its original rock instrumentation-oceanic guitars and vapor trails of air-weight vocals. Each remix is a revelation, a brilliant fusion of its origin and its newly re-engineered life.
Freescha Whats Come Inside of You
What a title. Nick Huntington and Michael McGroarty are either the mack-daddies of downtempo IDM or the most sexually-frustrated among the laptop crowd, because there’s no getting around just how sexy, bubbly and narcotic their third Freescha LP really is. Whats leaves behind the operatic melancholia of Freescha’s first two albums, opting instead for the mesmerizing carnival funk of “Watcha Gonna Go For It?” and the synth-driven post-disco smarm on “Smurf Shoo,” plus lots of genre-crossing ground in between. Cotton candy panties for your ears. Seeing as Freescha focus on actual melodies instead of loops for their music, labeling them the Boards of California is no longer viable.
SCSI-9 Digital Russion
Moscow-natives Anton Kubikov and Maxim Miyutenko certainly have their sound on lockdown, and it shows in their ability to jump from pop-based house to dark and epic techno jams without flinching. Although the production duo went surprisingly unrepresented on Force Inc.’s recent Digital Disco and Clicks & Cuts 3 compilations, maybe it’s because picking a single track to love over the rest is pretty tough. The majority of the album comes straight off the hard drive (that is, it’s mostly brand new tracks), but a few favorite 12″ singles made the cut, too. There’s definitely a sinister digi-industrial side to the album ? la Sutekh, but it’s masked over with a rich, clubby attitude. Oh yeah, and you pronounce it “Scuzzy Nine.”
Cool Hipnoise Showcase & More
Afro-Brazilian cool and acid jazz form the outer contours of Cool Hipnoise, a group that combines electro flamboyance with dub flavor. Percussion arrangements range from ostentatious to ultra-urbane, interweaving clava, snare and African gourd sounds. “Dois” evokes Getzian Ipanema and “3 Por Timor” combines bossa nova bass with lilting horns. The populist spirit of dub is redolent in such tracks as “C’Mon Family,” which features The Last Poets, and the swank redux of Nirvana’s “Come As You Are.”
Various Artists Cortex Volume 2
Ummm… elevator with an edge? In Volume 2, which features tracks reissued from 1977-Cortex dishes out the kind of super-kitsch tunes that Chick Corea might be playing if he took a lot of acid and joined the Average White Band. What results is a balmy collection of jazz-rock tracks, the kind of posterboard stuff that would suit a ’70s exploitation film. Musically, the album’s tepid: a synth dithering on the pentatonic scale, a little feedback-laced guitar, and a lot of thack-thwacky high-hat. If you’re down for cheese’ recommend the sing-songy “Regina” and the agreeably funky “Mister J.”
Gravy Train!!! Hello Doctor
If there’s one thing the unabashedly schlocky music of Gravy Train!!! doesn’t suffer from, it’s a lack of self-irony. The group grew famous poaching beats from Casio Tone for the Very Alone, and routinely drawing inspiration from malt liquor, Dairy Queen, and the ass bandit. On the album Hello Doctor, Chunx, Hunx, Funx and Drunx unleash their gutter-punk sass with no apologies-a method borrowed from the Yeastie Girls. Their most infectious tracks-“Titties Bounce” and the infamous “You Made Me Gay”-are meant to be played at full volume, and will make a whole art house get crunk.
75 Degrees Children’s Story Redux
Not since Sticky Fingaz came to town has the world seen a more churlish MC than Rick Bond of 75 Degrees, a group bold enough to redo the kitschy rap standard “Children’s Story” on their infectious new single. Then again, egghead humor’s part of their appeal: check the track “Jesus Piece.”
J Boogie’s Dubtronic Science S/t
At an earlier point in life’ might have called J Boogie’s Dubtronic Science a religious experience. But today the medley of loping, after-the-acid-trip tunes conjures visions of velour-clad hipsters lounging under junior prom disco balls. Stronger tracks like “Universal Dub,” which features Jamaican radio DJ and poet Tony Moses, and “Movin to my Beat,” with LA’s People Under the Stairs, almost compensate for watered-down numbers like Goapale and Capitol A’s “Try Me”-you’d expect more from some of these artists. But on the “beats for your sheets” tip, the album fulfills its promise. Don’t believe me? Check Crown City Rockers MC Raashan’s rap on “Get It Started.”
Yoshimi and Yuka Flower With No Color
Sure to be overlooked for its elegant subtlety, Cibo Matto-programmer Yuka Honda and Yoshimi P-We (Boredoms, OOIOO, Free Kitten) have created a minor ambient/improv masterpiece in Flower With No Color. Made while traveling and living together in rural Japan, Flower gathers field recordings of birds, temple bells and sounds of their truck with piano, bamboo flutes, trumpets and synthesizers into a something not unlike Alice Coltrane, Sun Ra and Damo Suzuiki wandering Mt. Ikoma on opium. Easily one of the most sublime 45-minute listening sessions I’ve spent in some time.
Various Artists Wild Dub: Dread Meets Punk Rocker Downtown
The second of Select Cuts’ collections focusing on the fecund period in the late-’70s when the white sphere of punk and the black world of reggae and dub merged for a brief, desegregated moment, Wild Dub collects rare versions from major players of the era, namely The Slits, PIL, The Ruts, Grace Jones, and The Pop Group. Good as those are, it’s the unlikely inclusion of dub-passes by The Pretty Things, Killing Joke, Generation X and 4 Be 2, however inconsitent and guitar-heavy they are, that display a disorientingly bizarre soundclash at work.
