RECORD REVIEW PAGE

THE ABBA GENERATION

A-Teens

MCA Records

by Missy Sinclair

Like, you know how there’s all these killer boy groups and too cute girl singers with their totally incredible videos and dancers? Well I heard this fresh group from like, Europe or something and they aren’t just a girl or a boy group, they’re two sisters and two boys. That Amit is just to die for! I wonder if he’s got a girlfriend? Oh well, he probably doesn’t speak English anyway. Oh yeah, these guys play some fantastic house tunes that I think are originally done by some old band called ABBA, I think. The songs are pretty forgettable but this will fill the dance floor at the next school dance. Darn, school’s out for summer, maybe they’ll get played at that all-ages club I love. I can’t wait to tell the girls about A-Teens, they’ll all want to burn it so that whenever we get together we can listen to it. That Dhani is kinda cute too, I wonder if the boys are like going with the girls. I heard they are touring with Britney! I can’t wait! Britney is just so very! I’m gonna buy an outfit just like the one she wore in that video! Oh, the A-Teens website is www.fanglobe.com/a-teens, there should be some pictures of Dhani and Amit there. Who cares about the girls, they’re ugly anyway.

MOVEMENT IN STILL LIFE

BT

Nettwerk America

Incredible, just simply fucking incredible. I can’t believe that anything this great can be released on an indie label. BT is perhaps Nettwerk’s first viable superstar artist since Sarah McLachlan moved on to the majors. That aside, you will be instantly taken in by Brian Transeau’s melodic and moving ode to music culture in the 00’s Movement in Still Life. Featuring ex-Soul Coughing’s M. Doughty on the breakbeat and acid driven Never Gonna Come Back Down, rapper Rasco, and DJ Davey Dave on the deeply funky Madskillz-Mic Checca, you’ll be replaying each song immediately. That breakdown!!! Yeah! The strings and scratching amplify the beauty of ex-Opus III singer Kirsty Hawkshaw while BT programs the dance beats and acid lines for maximum effect. Shame is the emotional centerpiece to Movement in Still Life with Transeau’s able singing and Richard Fortus on guitars. Uber-Producer Alan Moulder layers the textures and vocals to cathartic heights and will have you spinning in ecstasy. I can hear this one easily getting radio play, a crossover hit for sure. The title song features Peanut Butter Wolf’s scratching skills and a sample of the Message to make for a breezy hip-hop meets the rave crowd instrumental. Godspeed is a beautiful trance number that has been burning up the dance floors over the last few years and is here in all its high-hat and house beat glory. Movement closes with the sounds of whispering electronics, raindrops, murmuring keyboards and a soulful vibe on Love on Haight Street featuring PB Wolf, and rappers Rasco and Fifty Grand. You’ll be nodding your head long into the night after replaying BT’s solid new LP Movement in Still Life.

PICTURE THIS

Joanna de Seyne

Netherworld

Joanna de Seyne is a local artist who, after completing an album for one of the major labels got dropped, bought her album and has released it with national support. She’s pretty, talented and resourceful. Picture This is an introspective pop album with strident singing and electronic effects, country mixing with urban, a mish-mash of styles and moods. Joanna de Seyne has made an album for the KCRW listener, with a reverence for song craft but a One World view of song styles and genres. The album opens with Nothing Left of Me (Picture This) which will have you singing along to the melodic vocals while you realize the song is about walking out on someone and State is moody bass, swirling guitars and harsh drums. I Don’t Deserve You is a heartfelt song about wanting to end a relationship, with acoustic guitar, sad synthesizers and de Seyne’s lovely and heartbreaking voice. Dying Days is another slow song with acoustic guitars and ambience that adds some fuzz guitar and picks up the pace if for only a moment with the lyrics “There’s a place/That’s full of hope/And it hides/Beneath your heart.” Away mixes playful drum programming and twangy guitars for an interesting effect. Janna de Seyne’s Picture This is an original album, something rare, but is accessible and intelligent and an emotional listen. To learn more about this album on the Internet visit www.joannadeseyne.com.

SUPERFAST

Dynamite Hack

Universal Music

Dynamite Hack are a crazy group of rockers from Austin. With a wicked sense of humor they bash out tunes about dyslexic relationships, smoking bowls, and hanging out with the boys. If you have a vocabulary in rock you’d say that this was either power pop or just good old fun times rock’n’roll. Short and sweet, catchy melodies, wailing guitars and quirky vocals make Dynamite Hack seem like a less laconic version of the Cars. Minor key melancholia melds with obtuse lyrics on G Force, making you yearn for a way out of a dull life, Alvin is an observational take on guyish behavior and Slice of Heaven is a countrified acoustic tune with a languid tempo and plucked strings. The tune that has got Dynamite Hack attention is their out-there sweetly sung acoustic take on NWA’s Boyz-n-the Hood. This is perhaps the whitest version of any rap song ever, and is such a lark that if you only buy Superfast for this song it should be worth it. These guys make Vanilla Ice seem like the downest gangsta in the world in comparison. The rest of Superfast sounds nothing like Boyz-n-the Hood but that’s a good thing. Dynamite Hack compose some silly shit but they truly rock and that’s all one can ask for with such media twits as Britney and Backstreet N’Synq taking over our pap saturated lives. Request one of their songs on your local radio station today, preferably something other than Boyz, the band will thank you for it. Here’s to hoping they don’t get stuck as one-hit wonders.

ODDITIES

Spring Heel Jack

Thirsty Ear Records

The duo of John Colon and Ashley Wales have some bizarre taste in music that only sometimes takes precedence over the beats on their Studio efforts. On Oddities they showcase some of their more output in the form of remixes and musique concrete compositions. I wish they could have included their remix of Tortoise available only on vinyl and so much more heard on the Internet but this should do for now. Don’t expect any Drum’n’Bass on this disc, do expect some fucked up shit in the form of noise, ambience, turntable experiments and William Burroughs. The only two palatable “songs” are Spring Heel’s take on a Thurston Moore piece called Root and a previously unreleased subliminal remix of Spiritualized’s Shine A Light. If you are a die-hard fan of Spring Heel Jack then you might be a completist and pick up Oddities but this disc is more likely suited to aficionados of controlled noise and scary effects. The remixes are nice though a bit too subdued to grab your attention. It’s good to know that the duo have diverse tastes in “music” but you’d best just wait it out for their next release called Disappear out on August 22,2000.

BOSSA MUNDO

Various Artists

Wave Music

Remixer and NYC legend Francois Kevorkian’s new Wave Music label has compiled some tasty soul and house music from around the world for the Bossa Mundo album. From Paris, Tokyo, Chicago, Brazil and beyond come producers who all have one thing in common: their inclusion of South American percussion and rhythms, hence the subtitle ...When Brazil Meets the World. Originally thought up by Parisian Chris “The French Kiss” and DJ Yellow the two put together a double CD and now with Kevorkian we have the top artists on one affordable disc. On it you will find some of the coolest grooving jazz from the likes of Calm (People from the Sun and the Earth) the Anthony Nicholson remix of Utsumi’s deep and exotic Candomble, the piano and acoustic guitar over subdued dance beats of Illusion by Limbo Experience and Jazzanova’s reverent tribute to both jazz and Brazilian rhythms on Tres Bien. With an ear to the dance floor you’ll also find some harder beats from the likes of Chari Chari (Black Shrine) and the vocal house of Tom & Joyce (Vai Minha Tristeza). On Bossa Mundo you will hear what can be done with dance music when you add some jazz, hand percussion, Brazilian rhythms and a looser feel: dance music you can feel as well as enjoy while relaxing with a Margarita and friends.

THE ORANGE SPOT SESSIONS VOL. 2

Various

Orange Peel Records

From the label that brought you SugarSpun and Penny’s Pet Dragonfly, both featured in these pages, comes this cool comp of new and unsigned band from across the U.S. and Australia. From the spry pop-punk of Georgia’s Sloppy Meateaters’s Outta Control to the tough and seductive Water by Natasha From Mars to the dynamic She Said by Penny’s you’ll find plenty to enjoy. Volume 2 contains mainly quirky and heartfelt rock like Table Scrap’s oddly nostalgic Eddie and Anne Androgynous by SugarSpun but also you’ll hear some harder tunes. Four Forty offers up their atmospheric metal song Fade and Drist thrash out the passionate Sterile. There’s a real feeling of “I heard them back when” on The Orange Spot Sessions Volume 2 especially with the revved up guitars and tuff vocals of Headfirst’s Tell Me and Iguana Jive’s Believe with their cool vocal harmonies and melodic guitars. Hear an exciting cross section of new talent from California and beyond before these young bands either give up or make it big time. Help them keep it up by asking for The Orange Spot Sessions Volume 2 at your local rekkid shop and by clicking on www.orangepeal.com.


LINKS

Bret's Ramblings: Return to the Main Page!
Interview with John Coxon of Spring Heel Jack.: