Gangpol & Mit: The 1000 Softcore Tourist People Club (Ipecac, 3/29/11)
Gangpol & Mit is a French audio/visual duo creating quirky electro-pop that draws from myriad influences, including funk, digital, noise, and cartoon and video-game worlds. Gangpol handles the boops, blits, and whirs, while Guillaumit contributes his equally bizarre animations that feature colorful geometric shapes and characters. The result is a whimsical, humorous romp through the absurd.
In the duo’s latest video, “The 1000 People Band” (which, defying all logic, bears the same name as G&M’s most recent album but does not actually appear on it), Gangpol creates an audio collage from whirling synths with an ever-building orchestra of cymbals, gunshots, various one-note offerings from synthetic harps and brass instruments — and, occasionally, animal sounds. The animation itself plays on Gangpol’s varied sounds, featuring a melting pot of characters that face off with their instruments. Included: harpist vs. jackhammer, a gun-in-hand businessman vs. stock chart, and hipster flautist vs. Egyptian. Sound weird enough to you? It is.