music
record reviews
mm- ELECTRONIC
Nick Warren ll Budapest (Global Underground)
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Number it in the GU series sees Nick Warren select another 25 tracks from the record box that accompanied him on his recent trip to Budapest. From the deeper grooves of Danny Tenaglia's ’Turn Me On’ to the harder edge sounds of Noom's ‘Nuclear Hyde', it’s a well-balanced blend of relentless beats, breakdowns and synth-laced crescendos, where the mixing is smooth although not adventurous. Warren's own mix of Timo Mass vs Ian Wilkie is included aloog With Arcadium's 'Fade Iiistinct' from Edinburgh-based label Zazoo. Fans of Warren’s preVious GU excurSions will not be disappomted. (KW)
H2504 Machine Turned Blues (SIXO7 Music)
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Mere words cannot do iustice to this monster of an album. To define it is an impOSSibility. HZSOA is in fact the chemical symbol for originality. Its components are the best elements of dance, indie, rock and punk, whipped together in an electronic blender, infused With a healthy dose of raw energy, With a dash of humour added for good measure. There isn't a bad track on here, but particular stand-outs are the two
44 I'll! LIST 10—24 Jun 1999
singles: 'Little Soul’ and 'lmitation Leather Jacket', which incorporates a cover of Led Zep's ‘Rock And Roll' into its dance-floor groove. Buy it. (KK)
HIP HOP
Various
On The Floor At The Boutique (Skint) ****
The first Big Beat Boutique compilation came from the decks of Norman Cook; the second sees the Lo-fidelity All Stars take the helm and mix up a storm of hip-hop, big beats and funk. Among the luminaries gracmg the Lo-fi's turntables are BDP, Les Rythmes Digitales, Armand Van Helden, Jungle Brothers, Indian Ropeman and, of course, the All-Stars themselves. Sitting pretty alongside these dance-floor greats is their message to the world: The Tams' 'Be Young, Be Foolish, Be Happy'. Featuring 21 seamlessly mixed tracks and lasting well over an hour, it is seriously the best party album in the world . . . ever! (KK)
ROCK
Impulsnon
Love Addict (lndependiente) s iv * Another month, another Parisian duo drenched in club culture. Although Christophe Monier and DJ Pascal R, together known as Impulsion, have been a creative partnership for most of the decade, writing a fanzme and releasing material on underground labels, it is surely the success of Daft Punk and Air which has allowed them to go overground. MUSICaHy, they produce harder sounds than their contemporaries. The majority of Love Addict has its roots in house but With a strong techno edge. The apex of the album is the monolithic Single 'Rock That House Musiq' which thumps its way to a crescendo like 'Higher State Of Consciousness' at 33rpm. (FS)
Tiny Too
Things That I Discover (Fierce Panda) it at “a ‘3:
A soaring, superconfident debut from this North London-Via-Nonrvay trio who combine the angular punk ranting of The Slits at their most accessible with the panoramic pop and vocal quirks of The Sugarcubes at their loudest, all delivered With enormous yore de Vivre. Which could mean we will shortly see Tiny Too fighting a celebrity
raw,
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ELECTRONIC Chemical Brothers Surrender (Virgin) air at it 1r ‘k
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Party like it‘s 1989: Chemical Brothers
They are the Chemicals, therefore they must do exactly what we least expect - without us, of course, even knowing that we don’t expect it. Welcome, then, to the '89-esque psychedelia and electro party where your hosts, Tom and Ed, have gathered together the best bits of, well,
everything.
Some pretty interesting folk have been invited along to the bash. Noel Gallagher has dropped by and surprised everyone with just how good he actually is on ‘Let Forever Be', while Bobby Gillespie does the Screamadeli'ca thing on the lullaby 'Dream On’. Hope Sandoval provides some ethereal vocals which magically wash over you on ’Asleep From Day', and Bernard Sumner rides ‘Out Of Control' like the 805 hero he is.
The Chemicals have moved away from the loud beats and amyl-fuelled craziness of their last album, Dig Your Own Hole, and into more considered territories. Surrender sees them prove yet again that they are on top of the pile with very good reason. Normally. we would tick off the choicest tidbits from the album. However, our hands are tied. You see, quite simply, every
track is brilliant. (Simone Baird)
French connection: Impulsion
deathmatch With irrepreSSIbIe Icelandic starlets Bellatrix. In most respects it would be good to think that the one planet could contain two such livewires but pop-pickers are gomg to have to eat a lot of Weetabix to have the stamina to keep up With this lot. (FS)
Indian Ropeman
Elephant Sound (Skint) a e 4r
Although named after a torrid psychedelic number by Julie Driscoll, Indian Ropeman, aka Sani Sen, and his music won't do a great deal to expand y0ur mind, stimulate your senses or broaden your horizons The tangle of beats, samples, moods and exotic instrumentation on his debut album have all been heard before put to better use on albums by Lo-Fidelity Allstars and Badmarsh & Shri. Elephant Sound is a case of right ingredients, wrong recipe — so there’s no symphony of flavours and no place on the Mastorchcf final for Sen. He could learn something from Iabelmate Norman Cook’s slicing and diCing technique. (FS)
Fuzz Townsend Far In (Fruition) at a ‘fl‘ 7:-
Speaking of the fat bloke who is in fact slim, here's the Midlands answer to the funk soul brother who has taken time out from his day job as drummer with Bentley Rhythm Ace to produce a solo album. It sounds JUSI like the preVious recordings of his paymasters, i.e. brash cut-and-paste fun embellished with lots of eclectic retro samples for people who don't really like techno. It’s instant, like Smash, goes down a treat, like tequrla and grapefruit juice and gleefully rips off that Smirnoff vodka ad mu5ic, Make room for one more in the sampledelic club (FS)
One Lady Owner
There's Only We (Creation) air 4: it There’s always a place for another bunch of scuzzy garage-rockers, as the interest in One Lady Owner proves, and so what if they do turn out to be The Stranglers de nos yours? Yes, you heard — these are creepy-looking boys enslaved by a dark and gritty muse who feeds them driVing riffs underscored by