Scratch Or Stitch

Melt Banana | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (May 21, 1996)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Skin Graft Records
• ASIN: B00005YNEF
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #63,820 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Phrenetic, Daring, Original, Japanese, November 29, 2002

By 

Mendicant Pigeon "Mendicant Pigeon" (pdx, or United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Scratch Or Stitch (Audio CD)

Wow, if you have never heard Melt Banana before, you are in for a very interesting aural ride. In fact, it is a daunting prospect even to write about the Melt Banana experience. By the following statement I mean absolutely no disrespect, Melt fans, so please don't take offense: The thing that I most like about them is their name which strikes me as the funniest, most brilliant and original name for a musical group I can think of. Having said this I must say that from the standpoint of sound originality, they command profound respect. How to describe it? Well, if you have ever heard a so-called "singing saw," (an instrument created by using a violin bow to create a reverberation in the blade of a rip saw and then to manipulate this hum by shaping the blade by bending to make the blade literally sing) then you can easily imagine the voice of the vocalist. I have never seen her but I imagine her to be small and squeaky and demonic. She is backed by drums and, I believe, two guitarists. The compositions they play, one dares not call them songs, are screamed, shouted, chanted, yelled and yipped to the accompaniment of gnarly, screaming, often heavily distorted guitar riffs and beautifully played, if seemingly speed-induced staccato drum rolls and cymbal clashes. The guitar reminds me of a punky Frank Zappa playing with a sneer. I can't think of a corresponding analogy for the drummer, but he is skilled. The verbals are composed of words and semi-meaningless phrases spouted seemingly at random with consideration only for the rhythmic sensibilties built into each stanza. A couple of decades ago I bought an album by an Australian band called, 'Birthday Party,' titled, I believe, 'Zoo Music Girl.' This is the closest that I have come since then to repeating such an experience with what might best be described as otherworldy noise: It isn't very much fun to listen to but it is nevertheless oddly compelling.
I first encountered a reference to Melt Banana in "Goings on About Town" in The New Yorker, in which the reviewer heavily praised the overwhelming Blitzkrieg-like presentation of the band but who made only a passing mention of the nature of the music. Since then I have seen it written that their live show really packs a punch. Therein lies the paradox of Melt Banana's original brand of music: It is difficult to get warm and fuzzy about but it is of the kind that when one hears they are playing, this causes one to very much wish to attend the show, if only to satisfy one's morbid curiousity.

4.0 out of 5 stars CRANK IT UP!!, September 11, 2009

By 

David Keymer "David Keymer" (Modesto CA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Scratch Or Stitch (Audio CD)

The biggest surprise among records I bought last year was an old (1996, which is ancient for rock music) recording by a Japanese industrial-terrorist-Dada-rock band called Melt-Banana. Melt-Banana is composed of two guitarists, both heavily amped, a thrasher-style drummer, and a squeaky-voiced vocalist who in range and vocal quality resemble a long play record being scraped crosswise on an amplified record turntable. The songs on the CD are short -four of them, including one of my favorites, "His Name Is Mickey (At Last She Got Him...)", clock in at a composite length of 68 seconds. There are lyrics to the songs -what else would the vocalist do without lyrics?--but they're pretty much beside the point, which is energy, irreverence and youth. Listening to Melt-Banana when you're distracted is a venture in masochism, but when you're in the mood and you want to crank up the stereo or iPod and make waves, Melt-Banana is perfect.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Scratch or Stitch, January 19, 2007

By 

Mike Newmark (Tarzana, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Scratch Or Stitch (Audio CD)

Tokyo's Melt Banana is the noisy, in-your-face yin to the Boredoms' hippie-experimental yang--a blitzkrieg onslaught of punked-out drums, slap bass, wildly gnarled guitar squeals and loud, high pitched vocals that sound as though they're being screamed by a seven-year-old with a serious attitude problem. Beginning with the jackhammer assault of "Plot in a Pot" and ripping through 22 songs in about as many minutes, "Scratch or Stitch" consistently cranks the volume to 11 and the speed to 200, and doesn't let the insanity subside for a precious second. That's okay, though, because YaSuKo O., Agata, Rika and Sudoh are skilled musicians and their playing is impressively tight, suggesting that each unhinged blast of noise is 100% intentional even as it seems improvised upon first passes. Often compared to Lightning Bolt's similarly unrelenting take on noise-rock that sounds like an aluminum bat to the forehead, Melt Banana is actually more like a machete, slashing the poor eardrums of anyone who dares to come in too close.