A few quickish reviews, one of which was written during the intermission in
_The Sound of Music_.
--
Reviewed:
Bochum Welt : Feelings on a Screen (Rephlex promo)
Like A Tim : Remixes (Rephlex promo)
DMX Krew : Fressshh! (Rephlex promo)
DMX Krew : You Can't Hide Your Love (Rephlex)
DMX Krew : You Can't Hide Your Love Remixes (Rephlex promo)
Sam & Valley : My Favourite Clinic (Rephlex promo)
Mu-Ziq : Lunatic Harness (Virgin)
Bochum Welt : Feelings on a Screen (Rephlex)
The day that Gianluigi di Costanza changes his sound is the day that I
breakdown and cry like a girl. Its such a pure, timeless fusion of
warm synthesis and achingly beautiful melodies that the world would
possibly be a worse place. Luckily then, this 12" breaks no real new
ground. Normally that might be a bad thing, but with melodies this
emotional, I couldn't care less. So track three sounds like a less-
simplistic _Asteroids Over Berlin_ and the lush remix of _La Nuit_
sounds like Speedy J's _Symmetry_ - this stuff just pushes all my
'electronica' buttons at once. Just completely timeless music that I'm
convinced I'll still be listening to for most of my life.
Like A Tim : Remixes (Rephlex)
Like A Tim material is not known for it's consistency or indeed its
sanity. His stuff is usually extremely fucked up - cartoon samples
rubbing up against distorted analogue tweets and cheesey electro beats.
The kind of chaos he could unleash on recent Rephlex artists output
gives me a kind of gleeful feeling - however, the possibilities
for optimum screwing around with the DMX Krew, Bochum Welt and Cylob
is dropped in favour of some more straight-up electro remixes. The DMX
Krew _You Can't Hide Your Love_ remixes are just semi-out of tune
ventures into cheeky straight electro bass. The Bochum Welt remix (one
of the tracks from _Feelings_) are turned into squealing simplistic
disaster areas. Most successful is the _Diof_ remix - Cylobs original
gets mutated into a wild wrong-pitched electro monster to top head
scratching effect. Gnarly stuff then but not as wild as I'd hoped -
LAT's cheesey house stuff is usually my favourite and it would've been
nice to see some cut-up remix madness going on.
DMX Krew : Fressshh! (Rephlex)
Music like this makes me laugh. This LP gives Ed DMX more room to try
out his less straight vocal electro cheese. And it works. There's just
something about this LP that reminds me of shopping - shopping in a
really awful kind of 80's shopping experience. The type of music that
would be played in 80's teen films with young vibrant teens getting
ready to go out to lame parties. It's so acutely lame, it's impressive.
But what really impresses is it's attention to detail - the analogue
lead solos are just so spot on, you want to nod and applaud at the
same time. But its not all cheese - there's a moody slow breaks track
and a total 80's up-tempo mood track that somehow didn't make it to
_The Lost Boys_ soundtrack (first track on the DEF side). There's
Pacman style computer game riffs rubbing up against Kraftwerkian
melodies. And the remix of _You Can't Your Love_ steals Bochum Welt's
best melodies. And finally, one of the cheekiest tracks I've ever
heard with a chorus of "Bonkers goes back to school" - brass stabs
that piss all over any Mike Paradinas track, this is a track for
English kids post-school TV cartoons. Lyrics about riding BMXs always
clinch it for me. Quite a surprise then, cos the cheese content (whilst
still high), is easily surmountable. This just oozes competence this LP
- theres even a few pointers to some more serious material that almost
makes me wish Ed DMX would try heading out into some more moody Bochum
Welt styled cuts. But in the meantime, I'm more than happy with lyrical
gems such as "Her body was in motion/to a deep electro groove".
DMX Krew : You Can't Hide Your Love (Rephlex)
Firm favourite in the 'worst sleeve ever' competition is this entry.
Vocal electro cheese from the ZX Spectrum generation complete with
enough wet 80's basslines to satisfy most Adidas Shell wearing break-
dancers. Highlight (because it's not in the normal DMX vein) is the
R&B style _Swing Mix_ of _Inside Out_ - complete with vocoded raps.
Cheeky, disposable stuff.
DMX Krew : You Can't Hide Your Love Remixes (Rephlex)
More of the same. Unlike the LP, theres no interludes or changes from
the teeth-grinding synth competence. Once again, its the _Inside Out_
mix that hits the spot with all the other mixes treading much the same
path.
Sam & Valley : My Favourite Clinic (Rephlex promo)
Highly bizarre stuff from this Japanese threesome. The first hint of
its strangeness is the cow noise chorus that comes in for no apparent
reason over the sweet naive melody of the first track. This is an LP of
inane cheap FM riffs and tacky drum patterns with effected Japanese
vocals on nearly all the tracks - a bizarre badly-recorded mix then but
there's something quite friendly and welcoming about the whole thing.
The New Order styled chords and electro beats of track 5 are cute and
happy and the mad, scrambling beats of track 9 are funny and groovy.
Normally, you'd have a few good tracks and a few patchy ones on an LP -
nearly all these LP tracks could be filed neatly under the 'patchy'
category. But it kind of makes it a nice, complete mess although its a
bit too bizarre in places to make much sense.
Mu-Ziq : Lunatic Harness (Virgin)
Sometimes Mike Paradinas is capable of writing some of the most
emotional music around. But after hearing the _Urmur Bile Trax_ series,
and the recent Jake Slazenger cheese, I was firmly convinced that those
days were gone. So up steps this LP, and with the first track _Brace
Yourself Jason_, you know that his skills at writing emotional music are
still there - its quite reminiscent of Squarepushers _Beep Street_ and
constantly evolves both with the jungle beats (carefully restrained this
time around) and the chords and melodies. In fact, theres a great deal
of Squarepusher sounding stuff on here although its more in tune with
Tom J's more melancholic older material than the newer jazzier cuts.
However, as with all of his releases, there's still space to cram in a
bit of light-hearted lo-fi funk - _Lunatic Harness_ being a good
example. Occasionally some tracks miss the mark - _Approaching Menace_
is a tech-step attempt that would probably sound devastating live (I'm
pretty sure he played either this or a track like it as part of his live
show) but that sounds bass-free and just plain noisy on this LP. And
_Wannabe_ rips off what sounds like an effected Spice Girls sample into
some dark distorted Aphex ambience. Overall, whilst all the tracks tread
a similar path, they're all of a pretty high quality. That combined with
the success of each track (in that Mike seems to be spending more time
on the complexity and structure of each track but not losing sight of
what each cut sounds like as a whole - this is where _Urmur_ fell down)
means that this LP is probably his best since _Bluff Limbo_. It really
is pretty good. My only issue is that whilst he is obviously into breaks
now, it would be refreshing to hear a less full-on cutting and pasting -
maybe this would be how he could marry the diversity of say _Bluff
Limbo_ with the new sound of this LP. Maybe in the next one then.
|| [CiM]
|| simonw@sol.ftp.com
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