The title must be ironic. This is Yello at their most focused and least excessive, ditching the atmospheric experiments of their first two albums and flexing their muscles as a pure dance act, albeit one of the most absurdly funny, subversively weird dance acts to ever hit the floor. Let's take the minor hit I Love You, for instance. It's slick, spare, club fodder that has more sound effects than actual instruments, and the lyrics all about... driving. No, really. That's actually what it's about. The main vocal hook is a sample of a woman saying "I love you!" and it barely has anything to do with the rest of the song, except when Dieter Meier responds with a hissed "I know!". God, I love Yello.
Anyways, the whole album pretty much follows in that vein: archly stylish dance music that eagerly exploits it's own inherent ridiculousness. Dieter Meier had finally found his groove as a frontman by this point, mostly using a hushed, deadpan speaking voice that occasionally lets a melody or two creep in - but not often. Frankly, I like it better this way, as the campy irony of his lyrics comes through a lot clearer without it ever being pushed too far over the top. Hell, maybe he's not even being ironic. Frankly, it's hard to care when the music manages to be so compulsively danceable and fascinatingly strange all at once.
The compositions are among the most skeletal Boris Blank has ever written, meaning that Carlos Peron gets to have a blast littering incongruous samples all over the place. I Love You is full of tires squealing, Great Mission manages to conjure up an entire electronic jungle, and Heavy Whispers (my favorite track) uses a woman screaming as part of the main rhythm. Only Pink Floyd has managed to use sound effects this effectively this often, and remember they had a lot more "real" instruments backing them up.
The main thing I want to emphasize is how much fun this album is to listen to. Like the Art Of Noise's first album, this is early electronic music at it's most playful, back when the concept of music made by machines was still a novelty in itself. Unlike the Art Of Noise's first album, however, this one features a slightly unhinged swiss millionaire ranting in broken english about seduction, excess, and... gorillas. Which party would YOU rather go to?
NICE! Damn, I'm really not too entrenched in good music. I'm still grooving to Atomic Dog and The Girl You Want (good ol' Devo). To sum it up I think music is far too generated these days, as you mentioned computer composition was a novelty back then but these days most programs have a auto-tune - which is likely pumping out half the shit that's out today.
ReplyDeleteIs it just me or do you start to feel like we lost a war whenever you hear "crack dat superman"... Shit, we really went a wee bit too far - the point of no return was probably when we decided lyrics didn't have to have any logical nor pronounceable meaning in a song... what the hell is yuleeee mean anyways? Ha, ha, ha.