Tussle: Cream Cuts (Smalltown Supersound)(Norway)
Imagine a bunch of stoners raised on a steady diet of krautrock’s fascist tyranny-of-the-beat machinations and the kind of lo-fi post punk epics that Killing Joke used to put out way back in the day and thus creating (or should I say stumbling into?) some sort of modern day redo of PiL‘s seminal mid 80s classic Flowers Of Romance.
The tribal percussion is certainly there but the use of electronics suggest these were kids who emerged after the acid house explosion and not holdovers from the punk/guitar era. It’s dance-rock but only in the extreme sense, the wife says it’s too lo-fi while I say an injection of a little poison in the system certainly couldn’t hurt as an antidote to all of the clean analog crispness of the mnml movement.
There is hardly any indie rock inspired lameness here as I am reminded that at the height of grunge in the mid 90s, dance music was also hitting it’s high water mark in the States too with one scene acting as a rejection of the other. In this case, mnml and dance-rock are also reaching their zenith’s but here both scenes borrow liberally from each other with a combo like Tussle cleverly spanning the two genres as a sign of the times. The combo’s influences seem a bit fey and indie rocker-ish so there is a good chance they could blow this new groove by the next album just like Radiohead did.
Asia Argento: Vs. Antipop, Archigram & Friends EP (Milan)(US)
Asia is the daughter of the legendary horror film director Dario Argento and a semi-respectable actress in Italy and Hollywood. Here she adorns the EP with a scary ass self-portrait that should have had her wearing some make-up and shaving her hairy pits.
The cover art is tough enough to swallow so knowing that the tunes on this EP are a bit on the fluffy, used-to-be-cool electroclash tip like Ladytron, I find the whole thing a big turn-off. The best mixes on this disk are the ones by Inflagranti ,who take the weaker of the two songs on the EP, “Vampy” and makes it something a little more dance floor friendly while Scratch Massive actually carve a credible peak hour cut out of “Someone.” Everyone else comes up short on some pretty thin source material. Not sure if this was really necessary.
D:Fuse-Thanks For Listening (Lost Angeles)(US)
It’s a damn shame that D:Fuse and production partner Mike Hiratzkamake such terrible, disco-lidded cocaine cowboy club music because they are both so incredibly talented and have produced a ton of singles and remixes to great success over the past decade.
Sadly, the melodies are laughable and the progressions so dated it was almost impossible to make it through the whole thing with a straight face. The best way D:Fuse could have done here instead of thanking me was to not making me listen to this. Precious minutes were lost that I will never gain back. That’s not a thank you, that’s more like a sharp stick to the eye.
-Sean-Michael Yoder
Sean-Michael Yoder is a Chico, California-based music writer and tastemaker. Check out more at vinyljunkierecords.blogspot.com
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