Ricardo Villalobos - Sei Es Drum

FLuViRuS, Dec 14, 2007

Mr Villalobos is at it again: polarising views with his latest musical outing, eliciting discussions on whether he is the future or demise of "minimal". Seriously, who cares? Not the genius himself. His self-unawareness and indifference shines through these seven quirky, almost demented, tracks that push "minimal" to the shorelines of experimentation.

Threading the pieces together is the commonality of latin-flavoured vocals, but ironically the vocals themselves thwart our efforts to pigeon-hole or understand. They vary from snippets of puzzling conversation (tracks 1, 5) to mantric refrains (tracks 3, 5, 6), to lazy and deliberate off-key singing. Phrases are chopped and trippy words tweaked into dub-like incoherence. The beats and basslines shuffle along, but occasionally break down into glitches and uneven tempos. Percussive tools such as hi-hats and side drums provide a strong counterpoint to the madness, but can also disappear all of a sudden, further unravelling and stripping down the tracks into shreds of barely-together music. What dope!

Music people, you want "minimal"? You got it right here. If you feel like locking yourself up in a mental asylum after (because you keep hearing a guy rapping “Baila Sin Petit” or a woman yelling “Chicken!” or "The goose is cooked!" in your head), then the tracks did their job beautifully. But if you want your minimal without an untidy and gritty side of evolving experimentalism, then maybe minimal isn’t, and never was, for you.

Was the above review useful to you? Yes  No  (report)