Customer Reviews

Smash

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

it sounds a lot like chris clark's clarence park meets mouse on mars idiology meets akufen's my way. utopia is an awesome track with shredded r'n'b diva vocals that sputter all over the place. hard t*ts is another track that stands out with it's piano melodies and crunchy beats that could easily have been lifted from freescha's whats come inside you. for the most part jackson keeps the tempo at a consistent mid pace throughout the entire disc so it's a pretty even listen. it's the tracks with the vocals that stand out from the pack but not neccessarily in a good way. the track with the little girl nonsensically rambling on and on is a good example. radio caca has a hidden track that starts in at about 18:47. i hate hidden tracks. this is good but not remarkable and there's nothing new or exciting here that hasn't been done before.

honestly i never do album reviews, but i came accross this album, and i kindof had to. my vocabulary isn't all complex and wordy like most album reviews i listen to... maybe it should be for this type of music.

album:
Jackson & His Computer Band - Smash

so i guess this is considered electronica, but honestly nowadays, what isnt?
wave of the future? maybe.... maybe not.... total disregard for musical structure? definately.. this album is rhythmicaly innacurate; but in a creative way. find me two measures in the whole album that are identical and ill give you a hundred bucks.
its something i definately haven't heard before, and i thought ive heard everything from A to Z. jackson messes with volume controls switching them up in the middle of a song, rotating them... you'll be experiencing some light sounds, and then all of a sudden a wave of full deep bass rush through your stereo or headphones, left to right, then dissapears.
this music is probably best listened to through headphones.
to make a metaphor out of his work, it feels as though this artist took paintbrushes and paints of everystyle of music ever invented, and just splattered them all over the canvas, and somehow made sense out of it.
this album takes you on a journey, but almost with a storyline like through a film.... but at most times, the storyline doesnt follow. its just interactions of rhythm and instruments guided by a magic wand.
however its not just random nonsense, the artist here was definately trying to communicate something, just not in our familiar 4/4 dialect.
can you still groove to it? well, you're definately not going to be getting your freak on with any ladies, unless theyre from another planet and speak the right language... but at times throughout the album i was bumpin my head.... he throws in some disco feel here and there, and some tracks feel like im marching... so there is rhythm, its just abstract and hard to filter.
if i had to color this album, it would be blue.
if i gave it a mood? well its definately not your common, sad gloomy, or happy joyfulness that most albums express.. its hard to find an emotion to fit this album.
is it something you've never heard before? yes.... will you like it? i dont know, probably not. but if you're that one weirdo like me... you may. i just dont know if the music world is ready for this album yet. honestly i dont think i am... but i know its something special... so ill put it on the shelf and take it down and give it another shot on april 18th, 2030.
you probably have no idea what this album is all about after reading this, but if youre interested, go find it somewhere.

Jackson & His Computer Band issue forth _Smash_, a funky album of cut-ups and heavy electro bass. Right from the beginning track, "Utopia," you hear Jackson's gears grinding as he assembles chunks of vocals into a careful construction. Yes, it's similar to Akufen and other microhouse contemporaries, but the underlying darkness suggests a slightly darker worldview. "Rock On" is carried by its deep and heavy drum beat, around which everything seems to fall. Jackson presents some interesting contrasts, juxtaposing the child narrating the story in "Oh Boy" to the fantastical rant that starts off the plodding "TV Dogs." The rhythms of "Teen Beat Ocean" sound quasi-Gary Glitter and the synths help reinforce that impression, while the bizarre twisting steel guitar of "Tropical Metal" seems to come from another planet altogether. But Jackson makes time for lightness as well: the short but melodic "Minidoux" and the delicate voices and piano on "Hard Tits." Jackson makes quite the smash indeed.

If you are a fan of electronica, you should definitely check this guy out, but be forewarned that he is a bit of a challenge to listen to, and many will dismiss this as just so much noise, although once I heard the complete first track "Utopia", I was pretty much hooked. This is a great headphone album for a rainy day.

He does seem to follow a bit of a formula on most of this album and most of the tracks are in a similar vein.

The only track that I didn't care for was "Oh Boy", with the kid's voice - I ususally skip that one.

Jackson is most certainly one the most unheralded talents not only in french circles, but around the globe. Smash is an exciting, grooving, even orchestral piece of work that is just a notch below an absolute masterpiec. I cant wait for his next project whatever that will be because this guy has a crap-ton of ingenuity and talent. I believe we are seeing a budding genius at work here.

I've been a big fan of JACKSON's remixes and tracks for several years, since he started putting them out since the late 90s, but this is his "debut" full-length CD release, and the first for major label WARP - well, Jackson takes one step forward, but two steps back - while his earlier cuts/remixes sounds more like peak-hour French electro-house ala early DAFT PUNK and/or CASSIUS, he's obviously been listening (stealing?) from a lot of AKUFEN and/or HERBERT type tracks, leading to his current cut-up style that sounds like a lot of contemporaries out there right about now - so while I cannot fault the "songs" here, I feel a bit of disappointment that what made Jackson so singular (check his earlier remixes from everyone from FREEFORM FIVE to SHAWN CHRISTOPHER) has now been overhauled to sound almost exactly like AKUFEN and the "boom selection" cut-up crew. Still, cool package, nice graphics, and worth a listen.

I enjoy the cut up deconstructed sound Jackson is going for here. But this album doesn't come together into something you can listen to. The songs are too free form lacking any point of focus. Mind you I like free form, but I still need something to pay attention to, be it the beat or the melody, or even the pacing, but this is a jumbled up crush without anything to really work with. However, track 2, rock on, is pretty good.

This album will literally amaze and rule every little bit of cilia in your brain. One of the most innovative and ingenious albums I have heard in a very long. The most unique aspect of this album that makes it so good are the tempo mismatches and the astounding clear static and clap samples. I dont know how he calibrated his EQ but I would like to find out!

I've heard horrible comparisons and blaming Jackson for copying other artists such as Daft Punk. This album IS house, but very very original at that, and probably the greatest debut album I've heard from any artist in years. Each song is put together brilliantly with montages of samples and glossy 80's texture. The album has a general dark atmosphere, but the end result isn't depressing at all but ecstatic.
Smash isn't just your old house album, it feels like an album. The only regret is the album seems to be a little short, but each song really seems to have its fullest effort, with some short fun in-betweens like "MOTO". So far I'm surprised to see this album get a bad-wrap...seriously astonished because this really feels like a classic. Anyone who thinks that this is bad has some screws loose!