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Recording:
  Disparation  
 
Artist:
  Biowire  
 
Label:
  Kindercore  
 
Release Date:
  13.March.2001  
 
Reviewed by:
  PostLibyan  
         
 
Rating:
   
         
 
Review:
 

Disparation is the debut release from a member of a Swedish electronic collective called Electronic Watusi Boogalo. A strange name, to be sure, but that begs the question of why this disc is released on Athens, GA based Kindercore records. Perhaps that's just the American label.

At any rate, this is a decent electronic album. There are some cool songs, and some annoying ones. Basically, Biowire plays the gamut of contemporary electronica: some songs sound like Plaid, some like Boards of Canada, some like Daft Punk, and some sound like The Orb. It is as if all of these influences were taken and swirled together, and at various times different elements come to the front.

The disc starts off with it's most annoying song, Antibiosys. This song features some nice enough beats and a fair keyboard melody, but all of this is buried under a vocodered voice repeating "We are superior, you are inferior". After about the fifth repetetion, it gets really old, and yet the sample continues to loop through the five minutes of the song. Ugh -- it makes me feel paranoid. If Biowire's desire was to set his listeners into a state of annoyance and insecurity, he certainly suceeded. Why he would want to do that is beyond me though....

Things pick up a bit for the Nobody Wisdom, which is a happy little song with a fuzzy keyboard melody that reminds me of the latest Plaid disc. At the end, this song disintigrates with the ascending sound of a spaceship taking off in some old Atari 2600 game. Nicely done.

The next three tracks continue in this sort of dance friendly yet still vaguely IDM vein. Chosen is a happy little moog riff over some sampled piano and drum beats. Seven four adds fuzzy bass into the mix, and Space adds some heavy drum beats. Space makes me think of a collaboration between Plaid and Daft Punk -- funky and organic keyboards and hard monotonous beats.

This is interesting in that while the two songs before Space seem mostly Plaid-like, the two songs after it seem to be French disco a la Daft Punk. The melodies are exceedingly funky, yet still vaguely mellow. I, for one, am not overly fond of Daft Punk -- i think that this sound is too repetetive and undynamic. It bores me, quite honestly, and these two tracks bore me as well. Why is French style disco so monotonous?

At any rate, after that Biowire begins a sweep of three vaguely Orb-like songs. The bass is deep and dubby, and drum beats echo for Leftgain, Finding the Way, and Layers of Uncalm. These are my three favorite tracks on the disc, but then again i am a somewhat rabid Orb fan. What i like about these songs is that Biowire adds some of his distinctive keyboard work to the general electronic dub sound.

Apparently, his real talent is as a keyboardist, and there is some very fine keyboard work all throughout the disc.

Which, in turn, reminds me of Boards of Canada. What i like so much about that band is that they are capable of creating some really catchy keyboard melodies to go with their beats. Biowire does the same thing, only his beats are not quite as catchy, usually. However, on My Knee he succeeds in creating a happy little tune that is very Boards of Canada like (would the adjective here be "Boards of Canadian"?). I think the reason for this is that My Knee uses one of the few vocal samples on the album, and it is distorted and buried under the keys. A very nice tune.

The album wraps up with There Once Was a Boy, a happy energetic track that features 80's style thumping drum beats, serious synths, and echoed voice. This sounds like it might have been an "extended dance mix" of some 80's tune. It's fun, but seems somewhat "old".

On the whole i would say that this is a solid debut. Obviously Biowire knows his stuff and has talent. On his debut he has shown his influences, and since they all come across clearly i am interested in seeing more work from this artist in the future.

Now that Biowire has explained where he is coming from, the next album should tell us where he is going. And it sounds like that will be interesting.

 
         
 
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