RECORD REVIEWS...

Luscious Jackson merge the coolest breakbeats with the best pop music and in their four album existence have never released one dudd song. As a two-piece, Jill and Vivien go under the Kostars monicker and play in a more acoustic style. The single came out in 1985 on coloured vinyl, preceeding the album by a year and seems to have reappeared since the latter’s release. All the single tracks are on the album, the only difference being that the Ween do backing vocals on the album version of Don’t Know Why! Kostars is the most soulful, peaceful music I’ve heard; the beats are light and funky, the vocal harmonies reach perfection with acoustic strumming to make you melt and the lyrics are honest, poetic and inspiring. After this came the Naked Eye EP which featured the single from the forthcoming album, three remixes plus two new tracks. This EP seems to have been rereleased about six months later when the album appeared, at which point the album version of Naked Eye was on the radio loads. These mixes are better though. There are two jungle mixes, both dancefloor ready with one more upbeat, rhythmic and vocal and the other more relaxed but just as rocking, plus a much darker and slower breakbeat track. Fever In Fever Out is simply awesome! It seems perfect in every way, from the swinging beats, funky rhythms and smooth vocals to the smaller jazzy electronic touches. It’s especially nice to see American bands taking on elements from over here and Luscious Jackson give major nods to the likes of Stereolab and have inserted a good dose of drum’n’bass into their new songs. The lyrics are personal, emotional and poetic, hopefully reaching out to and inspiring women the world over. From a male perspective, I just sit there mesmerized, oblivious to the world outside and emerging both wiser and more peaceful. All four records are life affirming artifacts.

CHA-CHA COHEN spook on the high lawn 12" (Chemikal Underground)

Album version plus two brilliant mixes of the same. This is my first Chemikal Underground buy - I thought it was all a load of twee shit - but now I’m converted! The title track is is a dark song with huge drumbeats, backward cymbals, Thinking Fellers/ Uncle Wiggly type guitar noodling and haunting vocals. It’s a cool track, there’s no doubting that, but the remixes are out of this world. The first is by Sasha Frere-Jones from New York’s Ui, with a stronger breakbeat and a real pogo chorus-type bit. The weird sounds come out in force and it’s definitely a dancer - I just hope Cha-Cha Cohen ain’t like Ui live, good as they were, a lot of people expected jungle/dance beats and got a heavy guitar Rodan type set instead. Studio stuff only, I guess. The B-side is deconstructed by Hood, much deeper and junglier, a lot more frantic and more of a soundscape than anything but a bloody good one at that! It’s dark and hypnotic, stopping and starting before morphing into a thumping house track guaranteed to create utmost confusion on any turntable. Fans of the fucked up will love this record!

DRAIN regional action! EP (Trance Syndicate)

This is exactly what I’d been waiting years for. Last issue’s Buttholes interview would’ve been a hell of a lot different if we’d have heard this first. Picking up where the Buttholes lost leave of their senses, the beats on this break all hell out of the mightiest hip hop records, a touch slow maybe but far beefier than the meat the Buttholes used to project onto their backdrops! It’s pretty exotic sounding, the song titles have a distinctive East Asian feel and King Coffey’s got some way cool instruments at work on the set. The old Buttholes’ King/Theresa trick of making you dance like crazy then stopping you in your tracks is taken forward here to its logical next step: King discovers a whole new rhythmic universe in Saigon Transcontinental, completely throwing the first time listener. This record is like explorations in percussion with truly bizarre samples and psychedelics thrown in for good measure. The coolest release ever on Trance Syndicate and definitely the biggest, funkiest beats that side of the Texan border.

SQAUREPUSHER port rhombus EP (Warp)

From the man who deejays armed with two turntables and a bass guitar comes a new ep with a funny name. Port?...err..thing ships come from? Rhombus?...funny shaped squares?....who knows what that’s all about.... the title track is long but it rocks; there’s an ambient side to it that really kicks in after a thirty second intro that builds up to a really noisy crescendo. Forget drumkits down the stairs and all that, this a full on percussion orchestra crashing down an elevator shaft! It settles down into it’s own rhythm pretty soon though, there’s lots of funny sounds and backwards stuff, all sounding pretty metallic, not at all polite d’n’b but not particularly deep’n’dark either, instead treading on unfamiliar middle ground, all new territory to these ears. The other side is a punked up bloody racket, with what sounds like a shedful of live bass guitar and someone indulging in some very intense cymbal bashing like there’s no tomorrow (there probably wasn’t...) on Problem Child, the best diy punk track since Atari Teenage Riot’s Deutchland Has Gotta Die. Whether it is diy or not, of course, is totally irrelevant: it’s just fucking great! This man is a true groundbreaker, please support him.