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.
Article comments
1 - BJ
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.
2 - Eric Olsen
Thanks BJ, I'm glad you like it and my powers of observation feel vindicated.
3 - Ben
Yes but can you get tunnel music released in 2001 on vinyl. Not so far for love nor money but I will suceed eventually