CD Review: Jam On This! The Best of Newcleus
Published December 20, 2005
In that dark age when Disco was ready to die but not quite dead, Newcleus came on the scene. All the fun silliness of the disco era is wrapped up in this album, but none of the tired stale air of what disco became. This album is full of all the excitement of what rap and hip-hop became.
It is dated, but to my mind it doesn't detract at all. According to the liner notes, these guys still loved the Disco music. They were only trying to take it to a new level.
Newcleus, of course, is famous for saying "wikiwikiwiki". That was their vocal imitation of record scratching, which they themselves avoided. The other MCs of the time were constantly scratching at the turntable, and Newcleus just mocked it.
I love their self-referential sarcasm. This is now one of my favorite albums. Electronic music is one of my most favorite kinds of music, and this is some proto-electronica. It seems to me to be like a sort of acoustic electronica, if there could be such a thing. It's so low-tech it is almost no tech.
- CD Review: Jam On This! The Best of Newcleus
- Published: December 20, 2005
- Type: Review
- Section: Music
- Writer: Murphy
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