david carretta - kill your radio
with a cover depicting the most awesome-ist of cool dudes featuring a mindmelt 1970's porn perm you know that this latest release from dj hells label, international deejay gigolos, is not going to hang about. seedy and nasty all wrapped up in cheap electro beats and noises.
for 70 minutes, as is to be expected, the album features pounding old school synths, vocals chants, and lots of stuff that can easily be lumped in with the scene that is 'electroclash'. however, this is not as simple as a rehash of other electro albums, as david knows his stuff, (legend has it, that it was a track that david made that prompted dj hell to setup a record label), so over the majority of the album it's like nitzer ebb never went away.
after the opening ambient 'hertz anthem' we get to the heartbeat pulse of the groove, with the almost songlike 'lovely toy', simple 4/4 beats, midi'd up sequencers battle, and a vocal loop about being 'your lovely toy', obviously with the purest of intentions, i'm sure. such driven simplicity can be enthralling in the right setting, and for a while this is indeed true. unfortunately though there is little variety on offer and so the album can become hard going, but increased exposure reveals that as well as checking out old nitzer ebb and front 242 albums, david has been recycling his old yello records (there's even a track called 'vicious games' - but i don't believe its a cover version) where certain vocal phrases are chopped up to become a backbone to a beat. best example is the excellent 'colors - transmition mix', where again, as well as the simple primal groove there is the human element of vocals creating an almost gothic like atmosphere amongst the phased synth lines creating an excellent blend of technology and human emotion.
the other obvious highlight, for me, 'extreme body' comes later on in the album, following more of the hard edged industrial beats and uneasy moods of 'homep', 'ta liberte c'est ca', and the kraftwerk type pop music of 'pop et sythetique' featuring more monotonic vocals reciting the title of the track for a pleasant 3 minute, as most of the tracks on the album exceed 5 minutes.
now to the reason for digging this album out : 'extreme body'.
the track is to the untrained ear another a straightforward 4/4 new beat monster, but over the white funk there is a chant of 'kiss' from my leeds faves age of chance. how this marriage came about i don't yet know, but hearing the overly familiar 1987 peel fave being sync'd up to a current sound (except in reality this album could have been made at any time in last 20 or so years) feels strange, and very refreshing. true crush collision as aoc used to preach about.
once we get past this track the rest of the album falls back into the set style, analogue synths battle hard and fast over their old beatbox rhythms, and every now and then, david's vocoder'd vocals add a layer of atmosphere and drama. so, while the album won't feature in many end of years lists, it has indeed become a welcome addition to my increasing pile of electro(clash) albums that fit the current desire as it matches the dark clouds, grey weather in splendidly colourful and tacky fashion.
simple - but damn effective.