Blogcritics The critical lens on today's culture & entertainment
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.
