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Disparation is the debut release from a member
of a Swedish electronic collective called Electronic Watusi
Boogalo. A strange name, to be sure, but that begs the question
of why this disc is released on Athens, GA based Kindercore
records. Perhaps that's just the American label.
At any rate, this is a decent electronic album. There are some
cool songs, and some annoying ones. Basically, Biowire plays
the gamut of contemporary electronica: some songs sound like
Plaid, some like Boards of Canada, some like Daft Punk, and
some sound like The Orb. It is as if all of these influences
were taken and swirled together, and at various times different
elements come to the front.
The disc starts off with it's most annoying song, Antibiosys.
This song features some nice enough beats and a fair keyboard
melody, but all of this is buried under a vocodered voice repeating
"We are superior, you are inferior". After about the
fifth repetetion, it gets really old, and yet the sample continues
to loop through the five minutes of the song. Ugh -- it makes
me feel paranoid. If Biowire's desire was to set his listeners
into a state of annoyance and insecurity, he certainly suceeded.
Why he would want to do that is beyond me though....
Things pick up a bit for the Nobody Wisdom, which is
a happy little song with a fuzzy keyboard melody that reminds
me of the latest Plaid disc.
At the end, this song disintigrates with the ascending sound
of a spaceship taking off in some old Atari 2600 game. Nicely
done.
The next three tracks continue in this sort of dance friendly
yet still vaguely IDM vein. Chosen is a happy little
moog riff over some sampled piano and drum beats. Seven four
adds fuzzy bass into the mix, and Space adds some heavy
drum beats. Space makes me think of a collaboration between
Plaid and Daft Punk -- funky and organic keyboards and hard
monotonous beats.
This is interesting in that while the two songs before Space
seem mostly Plaid-like, the two songs after it seem to be French
disco a la Daft Punk. The melodies are exceedingly funky, yet
still vaguely mellow. I, for one, am not overly fond of Daft
Punk -- i think that this sound is too repetetive and undynamic.
It bores me, quite honestly, and these two tracks bore me as
well. Why is French style disco so monotonous?
At any rate, after that Biowire begins a sweep of three vaguely
Orb-like songs. The bass is deep and dubby, and drum beats echo
for Leftgain, Finding the Way, and Layers of
Uncalm. These are my three favorite tracks on the disc,
but then again i am a somewhat rabid Orb
fan. What i like about these songs is that Biowire adds some
of his distinctive keyboard work to the general electronic dub
sound.
Apparently, his real talent is as a keyboardist, and there
is some very fine keyboard work all throughout the disc.
Which, in turn, reminds me of Boards of Canada. What i like
so much about that band is that they are capable of creating
some really catchy keyboard melodies to go with their beats.
Biowire does the same thing, only his beats are not quite as
catchy, usually. However, on My Knee he succeeds in creating
a happy little tune that is very Boards of Canada like (would
the adjective here be "Boards of Canadian"?). I think
the reason for this is that My Knee uses one of the few
vocal samples on the album, and it is distorted and buried under
the keys. A very nice tune.
The album wraps up with There Once Was a Boy, a happy
energetic track that features 80's style thumping drum beats,
serious synths, and echoed voice. This sounds like it might
have been an "extended dance mix" of some 80's tune.
It's fun, but seems somewhat "old".
On the whole i would say that this is a solid debut. Obviously
Biowire knows his stuff and has talent. On his debut he has
shown his influences, and since they all come across clearly
i am interested in seeing more work from this artist in the
future.
Now that Biowire has explained where he is coming from, the
next album should tell us where he is going. And it sounds like
that will be interesting.
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