Uwe Schmidt has had an extensive career, recording under many names as electronic musicians do, but it's his work as Señor Coconut (and now as Atom™), where he deconstructs familiar songs into something Kraftwerk would play if hired to play a quinceañera, that brings me this very particular weird glee.
Get your headphones on and listen to this master of mood make his way across the undulating sands, the wet guitar reverb, warbling organs, crystal-clear claves, and snaking melodies sounding like surf music for a desert holiday.
Sometimes rock and roll seems to get stuck in a rut, but The New Madness bring fresh life to a sound that was old before they were born.
“Batu means ‘rock’ in Malay” said the photographer, for the third time in a week. The sous-chef ignored the comment, also for the third time, and tried squinting in the darkness at the cribbage board. They had been wise enough to purchase a glow-in-the-dark deck after all these midnight assignments, but had yet to extend their ingenuity to the board. Tapping a foot in irritation, they knocked over the thermos full of hot cocoa set on the steps, and it would have rolled down several long flights of guano-covered stairs had it not been stopped by the tandem bike’s wheel leaning against the statue’s pedestal. Above them, Lord Murugan stared stonily into the dark.
Billy Martin’s drumming makes me think of oxymorons like “precisely sloppy” and “intensely casual” and “red hot chill out”. This album lives within a zone that’s hazily bounded by funk, jazz, and electronic dance music.
Well into their third decade, G. Love and Special Sauce still sound like they are in no particular hurry to get there.
They had been shot at. They had avoided countless booby traps. They had been served tiny delicate cups of the most aromatic and poisonous espresso. All of these events were framed as interrupted cribbage games. Maybe they played too much. The phlebotomist ruminated on this as they locked up their two-wheel drive all-terrain motorbikes across the street from Kirov Park. The Transnistrian passports had been excruciatingly expensive, but the ergonomist insisted it was justified, for complicated political reasons. The pieces rattled against the cribbage board and the very dangerous little notebook in the messenger bag as they strolled through the trail, looking for a man holding two empty water bottles.
“Did you say you wanted FIVE?” asked the turkey-leg vendor, his incredulity betraying the slightest bit of Norwegian accent. The crowds at the Trondenes Middle Ages Visitor Park thronged past as the young man counted the hands available to the pair before him, performed a simple matching algorithm to the five turkey-legs being requested, and came up with a non-computing value. “We’re hungry,” offered the machinist helpfully. The gymnast kept an eye out for Sverre the allodialist. They needed to have a few words with him about the land titles, preferably in the privacy of the sleek three-man catamaran that had discretely brought them here. The half-darkening of the sky that passed for night at these latitudes meant the usual tactics were out and they would have to convince him to come willingly.
Would the tour of palaces never end? Having visited several monarchical residences, the cobbler had become habitually underwhelmed with the perpetual ostentation. Taking a seat at a padded bench to admire the mosaics of Dar al-Makhzen, the topologist hummed a Balkan square-dancing melody. The ancient Land Cruiser that had brought them here, well-cared for and highly-modified, sat in a modern parking lot that clashed with the surrounding Moroccan geometry. They pretended to take some selfies while monitoring the 360° camera feed coming from the vehicle.
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