various - "kicking ass and sucking gas"

electronica's atavism has kicked into high gear with the ascendance of backwards compatible futurists like morr music in recent years. the success of bands like solvent and console is proof positive that you can sell a sound fifteen-plus years old and people will still drop their hard-earned shekels for a taste of the old 1985. i can't complain; the music's good and it's not like morr, suction, et al are still busting out magical mystery tour-era beatles soundalikes, as are the elephant six crew. nostalgia, of course, recurses madly and people will look soon wistfully back at the good old days of 1998, when sporty spice seemed straight and ozzy osbourne really wasn't going to tour again. maybe we're already there.
it's only natural, then, that the early warp records sound should enjoy a comeback of sorts, beginning most notably with bola's late 1998 debut cd, soup. marked by an expansive, vangelis-like sound, most songs on soup would have been at home on either of the artificial intelligence compilations of the early nineties. it sounds anomalous now because there are no hangups; it's too positive sounding to be current, yet it's too good to write off as merely dated. the acts on the recordings under construction label are similarly self-assured. who in god's name would release a jungle song in 2001?

remember jungle? photek?
remember electro? mantronix?

yesh, there are still freaks all over the world, high on kool-aid, cranking out turgidly quantized 808 beats, and some of them are on kicking ass and sucking gas, a knockout, dirt-cheap compilation of old-skool warp records-styled freakouts from recordings under construction. the mood is gleefully retro; uk pioneers black dog (and plaid, by proxy) stand over the proceedings like the grim family spooks they are, and for the most part, it works. boulderdash's 8-bit introspections complement slybot's murkyquirky, freeformish head-nodders very nicely, though your mileage may vary with pro-seed's misguided, ethically challenged reggae experiment, dommatosk full (to be fair, they somehow redeem themselves with the cd closer, pelles jaevelbossa, another reggae error with a grating sinewave melody yanked right out of the plone songbook, but i don't think i'll go out of my way to find their cd). spinform's uneasy truce between 1997-era beat science and nitrous-dazed noodling may not work for everyone either, but it should please the µ-ziq and even EU fans out there. if nothing else, the cd only costs like four bucks, new. c'mon. four dollars is a pretty small price to pay for a quick and unhealthy lunch. for a label's musical vision, it's a steal. like solvent or hermann and kleine, these bands look back and offer solace in an aesthetic that is retro, yet still vibrant, futuristic, like the old warp records sound that was discarded years before it had ever become truly contemporary (hear any new hip hop recently? -ed., 11.08.01). perhaps amidst the high speed progress, there's an unspoken distrust of the new, even a need to strip things of their novelty; in boulderdash's three minute culture, we trash and recycle our new commodities before we use them, they're old almost out of the box. applied to denim clothing, it's a particularly unfortunate practice, but music somehow takes the abuse gracefully. kick this old eyesore's tires all you want, say ruc - cadillacs never die.

my cd shelf is full of these promising compilations from labels that never released follow-ups. carpet bomb records are one such label, as are, sadly, recordings under construction. after releasing some fine cd's by slyboots, spinform and, most notably, boulderdash, ruc released kicking ass and sucking gas as a budget-priced sampler and promptly disappeared. it sounds like most ruc releases are worth the effort to find, so grab this and boulderdash's fine we never went to koxut island anywhere you might find them.

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