As deranged, diverse and compelling as cover and title would suggest. Band hail from Osaka, though this is incidental to their defining achievement: a multiplicity of sound layers pierced by one single breakcore beat making for a destabilisng futuristic hip hop attack, alternating with fried folkery in the female Fursaxa vein.
Accordingly, opener Next Year's Snow lovingly mimics Vashti Bunyan to the point of pastiche. Only gentle glitches give warning of cut-up madness to come. Next up, (R.I.P.) Tide, a psychedelicised mash up of Pentangle's Light Flight, in which we are invited to get our collective freak on, repeatedly. Saddam Fed Bird While Jailed ups the ante on beats and samples and ushers in Stanley knife mayhem of next two tracks, slashing, ripping and pasting multifarious field recordings, riffs and songs and shaping them into howling beast beat monsters. A light and dark pattern emerges as the acid-fried harmonium chill returns with the respite of Glaneurs and Diamond Day hip hop of Pinky (the latter with further exhortations to get our freak on - a given by this point). Thence the breakcore-tastic Custom Drum Destroyer delivers on its title: wholesale lo-fi sample of No Fun mid-way through is nothing short of sublime. Left-handed Darling is twisted J-Pop. 9 Headed Monster begins by asking: "Are you a good witch or a bad witch?" - a leitmotif for all this light and dark dialectic bethinks y brawd. So thick and furious are the subsequent breaks that the answer has to be "dazed and confused witch, thank you very much". Things then tail off into pleasing mellowness: a stab at 80s pop with Paradise; more Vashti / Fursaxa shenanigans on Kanariya; Margo Guryan over easy on Nido; a reprise of Next Year's Snow; to finish, a mad big beat electro-debris cover of Francoise Hardy's unassailable Comment Te Dire Adieu.
Easy then to understand criticism from some quarters aimed at the lack of full on breakcore onslaught with this release. However, to these ears the leavening of beats and samples with female oriented chilled out pop and free folkery work their magic. Proving perhaps that nothing is ever entirely black and white.
Oddi wrth y brawd
for twitchy witchy folk everywhere
2 comments:
Yeah. Not bad. I really liked the folk elements in this. The frantic, mashed-up drummy bits didn't really inspire as much, though. This is a type of album I'd never usually listen to and so it made a nice change on a Sunday afternoon. Thanks!
Always happy to brighten up someone's Sunday afternoon. Keep checking in.
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