I wrote this at the end of june and it never apparently showed up on
IDM. IF it did and I missed it, forgive me. Someone asked for a
review today, so I'm reposting it.
Mike and Rich 'Expert Knob Twiddlers'
Rephlex CAT027CD
First listen -- I think "The Sound of Beady Eyes" is marvelous.
Wouldn't be out of place in acid jazz setting, but it goes places
in a funky Slazenger style groove. Maybe no one else has made the
connection, but MP's live playing seems to owe a lot to Stevie Wonder.
He can do that wonderful thing where he comps over a beat, and drops in
funkly little stabs and fills. This cut is him doing that with a
nice wah synth solo over the top, and RDJ playing the 'wistful pad'
sound.
'Mr. Frosty' follows a similar pattern, but a little more up tempo
and danceable. The wistful strings are there too. Pardon me, but
when did RDJ start using a Korg Wavestation?
'Upright Kangaroo' must be an anagram somehow of 'Fart, Belch, and
Pinch your cheek and shake it.' Made me kind of seasick.
'Eggy Toast' is kind of a loosey goosey 7/4 jam. It reminds me
of old Can records -- similar feel. Mmmm, Eggy!
'Reg' features either Mike or Rich, singing nonsense syllables, something
that pops up later in 'bu bu bu ba'. There appears to be a 303 at
work here, but they keep it from screaming ACEEED -- it just blurps
from time to time through a spring reverb.
Did this come out of the sessions where RDJ got MP blind drunk on vodka,
as reported by MP in an interview? The song title 'Vodka' sounds like a clue.
This one is the most like a real mix of the Rich and Mike styles, the
drumming has lots of wiggly MS20 bleeps to it (Rich), and carnival
organ loops (Mike), and breakdowns to echoey pentatonic melodies
(Mike).
The other tracks are pretty weird -- they seem to have gotten some
loops off of old records -- easy listening and cha cha records in
particular. I may grow to love them, but I can guarantee that many
on this will NOT like them. I seriously think this record would send
Jon Drukman right over the edge, so keep it away from him.
Stylisticly it is definitely is more a Muziq album than a AFX record. To
the extent there is actual playing and composition of melodies it sounds
more like Paradinas. And yet, and yet ... I could be mistaken. They
both come from a similar place musically, but from different angles.
MP is more of a player of the black&whites, and RDJ is more of a knob
twiddler.
Most of the disk sounds like it was mastered to a crap consumer cassette
deck with dirty heads -- there's a sort of noise halo around the edges
of the stereo field. This turns up a lot in Muziq recordings -- as though
he's overloading the main outs on his mixer. I like distortion as much
as the next guy, but the crud in some of these tracks just sounds like
sloppy recording.
And yes the cover is marvelous -- It's meant to be a parady of a Milton
Bradley game box, down to the red and blue MR logo in the corner.
And now that Rephlex misspelled Paradinas on the package insert, I don't
feel so bad to have my misspellings of his name preserved for all time
and eternity in the IDM archives.
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"I read Keyboard, but it's like staring at a book with pictures
of simple looking but expensive machines." -- Michael Lazarev
NEW CD Comp Electronic Music Project
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Kent Williams kent@inav.net
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