Zongamin - Zongamin
Published August 21, 2003
Imagine the music created by a 29-year-old Japanese visual artist (Susumu Mukai) living in London on his home four-track with analog electronics, samples, guitars, bass, turntables, electric piano organ and other keyboards, clarinet, cooking spatulas, a matchbox and other found objects, drawing equally from severe avant garde electronica, disco (especially the Chic-like guitar), funk, punk, Sergio Morricone-style film music, surf, and breakbeat dance styles.
You'd have Zongamin, the "group" and the album. I love this quirky, eccentric, back-to-the-future, DIY, post-modern amalgam of the ultra-real and the ultra-false, as cheesy, disorienting, yet as very human as a Japanese monster flick.
The CD is engrossing all the way through, but the last two songs kill: the disco-funk workout "Tunnel Music" cooks with a futurist vengeance, and "Mummies" is a music box-inspired ambient wonder with a hint of menace - very cool iconic graphics by the artist as well. This is what it feels like to be digested and eliminated by popular culture, and enjoy it.
- Zongamin - Zongamin
- Published: August 21, 2003
- Type:
- Section: Music
- Filed Under: Music: Electronica
- Writer: Eric Olsen
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Comments
Thanks BJ, I'm glad you like it and my powers of observation feel vindicated.
Yes but can you get tunnel music released in 2001 on vinyl. Not so far for love nor money but I will suceed eventually




Thanks for the review, Eric. I picked it up today (on Emusic) and am having fun listening to it now.
And if anyone is wondering, it really does sound like what Eric described. A couple of the songs also have very cool percussion - lord knows what instruments made the sounds.