Customer Reviews

Various Chimeras

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Bought the CD (from Amazon, but it's on iTunes) upon reading great reviews (in Toronto Star, Cokemachineglow, etc.) Well worth it. The music on Various Chimeras by Shinjuku Zulu is best described as cross-genre pop electronic. It has dance and chillout songs and a host of vocalists--rappers and singers and reggae chanters and choirs and so on. It also fuses eras--there's a ragtime thing goin' on, some 1920s and '30s blues and soul, current grime, old school breaks and rap and hip hop references, some punk funk and electro, all mixed in with next millenium electronic production. There's a lot of depth to this CD, with beautiful lyrics, like: "Intimately, under a digital moon / Fractal flowers, in full bloom / Sway back and forth as one / Endlessly dreaming of the analog sun" (Massive Ballerina)and witty: "Lil' Kim is the new Maid Marian, Rastafarian the new Librarian" (Slow is the New Fast)...which you might not pick up on the first few listens. In fact, that is the album's strength--it has a few very fun and instantly lovable tracks (see Da Riddim Griffin with its electro-cabaret-cheerleader vibe, and the raggatronic We Do Supersonic) but it's the more melancholic songs that will keep you listening for months... Coal Coal Black is haunting; My Man Amen is heartbreaking; Scarborough Fair (A True Dub of Mine) is hallucinogenic, simultaneously heavy and heavenly. And each time you hear the cd you'll hear more details, like the handclaps and banjos on Dirty Liar, the work-song beat created by dj scratches on My Man Amen, the multiple references over songs to Timbuktu, etc. (A good reason to by hardcopy, for the included lyric sheet.) Best album of the last few years. Better than Gnarls Barkley, Gorrilaz, M.I.A., Imogen Heap, Zero 7, Air, Thievery Corporation and Madonna... because it combines aspects of all of them on one disc.