Tourrorists

Porest | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (February 21, 2006)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Abduction Records
• ASIN: B000E5LF32
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #605,198 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

01. Little Fiddle
02. Continental Revolt
03. Let's Roll
04. Eye of the Leopard (In English) with Aavikko
05. Levantine Spirit
06. We Eat the People
07. Mach Mach
08. Hoyda
09. Monshallahm Visit
10. INS Urgent
11. Magic Carpet of the Holocaust Revival
12. Tropical Cancer
13. OFEK Down
14. Meat Supply
15. Pentagonal Parlor

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars it's the ideological content that renders this album a pipe bomb, March 4, 2006

By 

Aquarius Records (San Francisco) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tourrorists (Audio CD)

Let it be known, that Tourroists! is a difficult record, and those with a stubborn lack of cultural objectivity will be wise to avoid this album. You have been warned!

Up until this album, Mark Gergis, the man behind Porest (as well as Mono Pause / Neung Phak), has been quietly mapping out his own course of ethnomusicology that hinges upon the complex layers of cultural perception between the US and the third world. Neung Phak stands as his Thai Pop ensemble, in which he exquisitely explores the particulars of SE Asian pop music complete with re-creations of radio dramas and the eccentric hybridizations of eastern and western idioms; he's also been responsible for some for some of the best collections from the Sublime Frequencies series (i.e. Choubi Choubi and Cambodian Cassette Archives). Porest is Gergis' media-manipulation project, and Tourrorists! will undoubtably go down as his most inflamatory and most provocative work.

Tourrorists is a scathing political record that unabashedly takes on the themes of 9/11, Guantanamo, Arabic conspiracy theories about Israeli secret police (Mossad), and Christian missionaries. However, unlike the politically charged works of Negativland, for example, Gergis refuses to center the album from a particular political or cultural institution (whether that be atheism, socialism, anarchism, etc.); instead, he challenges the listener to question his or her own politics and cultural perspective about any of the topics.

Case in point: "Let's Roll" recontextualizes various media snippets from the 9/11 hearings as well as Jihadist rhetoric through computerized voices that emulate the inflection of an American woman, an American man, and an African-American man. There's something intrinsically disturbing about these dispassionate spoken texts, not to mention the wildly contradictory banter between these three characters. Similarly, Gergis collages a particularlly banal public service announcement into a matter of fact "Soilent Green is people!" declaration. Gergis also gives an English translation to the classic collaboration between Aaviko and Kabar on "Eye of the Leopard" originally sung by the only known escapee from Guantanamo. Alan Bishop from the Sun City Girls also makes a stunning cameo on the summery groove of "Hoyda."

None of this speaks of the intricacy of Gergis' musical productions which run from mangled electronics, plenty post-SCG Syrian pop numbers, and canned bossanova rhythms; but, it's the ideological content that renders this album a pipe bomb. Tourrorists! is bound to p-ss you off or offend you in some way shape or form; and I mean that as a very high compliment.