Viva! La Woman

Cibo Matto

Product Details

• Audio CD (January 16, 1996)
• Original Release Date: January 16, 1996
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Warner Bros / Wea
• ASIN: B000002N11
• Also Available in: Audio Cassette  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (65 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #52,089 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
From the melting pot of New York's East Village come two ultrahip and very tasty expatriate Japanese music-makers, Miho Hatori and Yuka Honda, calling themselves Cibo Matto. That the name (pronounced "cheebo motto") means "food madness" in Italian is appropriate: the female duo sings about things to eat (apples, beef jerky, artichokes, birthday cakes) on all 10 tracks of their debut album, Viva! La Woman. And even if the record's lyrics are generally nonsensical, food makes for a great text: ripe with metaphors, it's sensual, colorful, irresistible, and quite universal. But as in another East Asian export--the 1994 Taiwanese film Eat Drink Man Woman--food is the canvas on which the artists paint their story, and not the story itself. Cibo Matto could just as easily stand for "sample madness." Sound, not taste, satisfies their appetite, and the disparate ingredients they pop in the blender--ambient bursts, random noises, hip-hop breakbeats, trip-hop swirls and churns, Afro-Cuban percussion, muted cool jazz trumpets, funky bass and keys--produce a sonic collage of rhythms and melodies that makes for some of the most successful sampler-based songwriting to date. Like Soul Coughing --a similar-minded downtown New York outfit--Cibo Matto don't replace real playing with sampler loops, they just bring the sampler into the mix as a limitless source for all the crazy sounds their conventional instruments can't get to. And like the Beastie Boys, Cibo Matto compose music the way kids play with toys--so naturally and so ecstatically it makes us all want to come out and join in their irrepressible fun. --Roni Sarig

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Viva La Cibbo Matto, June 1, 2005

By	E. A Solinas "ea_solinas" (MD USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Don't be deceived by the title of "Viva La Woman." Or, for that matter, by the metal-braed amazon on the cover. This album, by New York's expatriate duo Cibo Matto, lives up to the name of the band -- it is all about food. Their brand of trippy, sultry pop centers on apples, jerky, cake, chicken, and plenty of other foodstuffs.

It opens with the dark, plodding "Apple," before lurching into the hilarious, jazzy "Beef Jerky." Miho Hatori strikes just the right irreverent note as she sings a string of non sequiturs: "My weight is three hundred pounds/My favorite is beef jerky/I'm a vagabond, I'm a vagabond/My mom says, you are kinky."

From there on, Cibo Matto strikes the right balance between colorful pop and musical irreverence -- ambient sweeps, drum machines, surreal distortion, cutesy breakbeats, peculiar samples and trippy balladry. Above it all, Hatori offers bizarre recipes, tells you to know your chicken, and is shot with bullets of pepper. (I can't make this stuff up)

Certain bands are hard to describe, and even harder to pigeonhole. Cibo Matto is one such band, with their sparkling musical palette and their even more impressive menu. Really, how many bands are brave enough to compare all human emotions to foodstuffs?

Hatori lives up to her description in the liner notes -- she howls, raps, sings, moans and keens, sounding like a bubblegum popster on acid. It takes a pretty brave singer to howl "Extra sugar, extra salt/extra oil and MSG... Shut up and eat!/You know my love is sweet!" She's backed up by Yuka Honda's exquisitely mishmashy pop melodies, which are just a little too dark to be kitschy.

The lyrics are almost as wonderfully weird. At first glance, they look like a sequence of random food phrases strung together. But there are some clever puns woven in, especially in the finale "Artichoke," where Hatori compares her heart to an artichoke, and croons the double entendre: "Can you squeeze a lemon on me...?" Whoa, shades of Led Zeppelin.

Cibo Matto's "Viva La Woman" could have just as easily been "Viva La Lunch." This food-obsessed album is full of enchantingly offbeat pop, but shouldn't be listened to on an empty stomach.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Kooky, camp and kaleidoscopic, July 1, 2004

By	Beketaten "beketaten" (Pangea) - See all my reviews

This album never ceases to entertain me with its witty one-liners, nonsense, and yet utter meaningfulness symbolized in their non-stop allegories of food speaking for elements of everyday life.
They do this all so expertly, in a way that's trippy hip-hop to the next psychadelic level.
Each song has an eerie quality, interspersed by immaculately crafted samples, and of course, the off-the-wall attitude of these two, very talented Japanese pranksters.
One of the finest albums in avant-hip-hop. I can't stop loving it.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars My Favorite is Beef Jerky!, August 8, 2001

By	M. S. Tucker "subversive snot" (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I stumbled upon this CD entirely by accident and had really no clue what to expect. What followed was this magical animae dream of lyrical food music.

Intially, I just giggled at the songs with the qirky lyrics about "Beef Jerky", chicken, "White Pepper Ice Cream" and "Birthday Cake". The rather thick Japanese accents where amusing and the lyrics were absolutely hilarious. I soon found that I couldn't get enough of this CD.

Although all of the tracks have incredible sampling and mixing skills, I think the most accessible track is "Le Pain Perdu", it has an incredible beat and is not quite as kooky and frenetic as the rest. Yuka Honda and Miho Hatori have an incredibly unique way of doing what I can only call New York Hip Rap with an animae twist. Thier version of "Candy Man" is by far the best I have ever heard.

What started out as one of my random, put this one on for laughs CD's has turned in to a tried and true staple in my CD changer. I still have friends over who hear it and initially giggle but then become intrigued and want a copy of thier own.

Viva La Woman isn't as musically mature as thier second effort "Stereo-Type A" but it is definately well worth a listen, or two or million.