Customer Reviews

Slickaphonics

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Replikants are one of the many Unwound side projects (featuring guitarist Justin Trosper and original drummer Brandt Whateverhisnameis); their first album "This Is Our Message" was a much more mangled affair, featuring noise freakouts, oblique Residents-style chirp and bleep, distortion, and mangled beat workouts. (Or, as their record label had it, "taking the azz out of jazz.") "Slikaphonics" finds the duo fleshed out to a full band; the songs (and they *are* songs, more or less) are also beefier, more direct, and engaging. That said, it's not easy listening. It flits from warped vocoder-hiphop, to noisy electro, to warbling punk, and even a few odd moments of plucked-guitar-and-bird-song pastoral beauty. There's a lot of much needed analogue grit in the face of uber-slick digital production; imagine "Slickaphonics" as the record a bunch of punks too cheap to afford a Powerbook would make after digesting Eno's "Oblique Strategies" and the work of John Cage. Because it is.

If you like music that challenges standard structure and the mundane layout of genre heterogenous sounds, then this may be the ticket. I myself am pretty well into far gone music that lives beyond the fringe, so this was just the ticket for me. You get a good mixtue of anything from electronic peace drone, to cruisy dub, buzzsaw cyberpunk and in the second last songs case, some superb filmic treats such as my personal fave, "Cicilian Defence". I like that this album has no words, I can slip it on and do my relative thing and thats what this album is good for.
I drag it out every once in a while and give it a spin and it was well worth the buy.