ELECTRIC INDEPENDENCE

AFX

Alden Tyrell

Doshhammer

Motor

One Monday morning a few weeks ago I awoke to discover that my flatmate had returned from another three-day rave bender with a handful of people he’d collected at various after-hours parties along the way. They were all in a state of extreme refreshment—gurning, parched-mouth stuttering, overly polite—and, as I knew them all, it was pretty amusing for at least five minutes. The two guys from the band Motor were there, Bryan Black and “Mr No” (a Frenchman named Olivier) clad in black and looking cool. It was particularly good to see these two again, even though Olivier splashed a little black coffee on the white flokati rug while leafing through some glossy French fashion magazine making jokes about perfume adverts that only he found hilarious. This odd couple have been producing vicious industrial power-electronics together for years (in the past, Bryan has worked with Prince and Felix Da Housecat) and it’s great to see the fruits of their labour materialise on Motor’s hefty debut Klunk, out soonish on Novamute. They also produce clashy electro-pop as X-Lover on Gigolo, but you can tell they’re most passionate about Motor, as the music—nasty, sarcastic, brutal, none-more-black—is an honest reflection of their characters. Maybe you know their perfect club hit “Sweatbox”, a menacing rumble of sticky static? If not, it’s on the album alongside things called “Killer”, “Botox” and “Spazm”, which give you a fair idea of where they’re coming from, i.e, a very bad place. Wondering what they like to eat when they’re not stamping on dolls and injecting each other in the eyeball with mercury, Vice asked them for their favourite recipes. Bryan explained how to make marshmallow Rice Krispies bars. Olivier, however, submitted this unusual take on a classic:

BARBECUE OF FERRARI DASHBOARD

Ingredients: 1 2005 Ferrari F430 Spider (must be mustard yellow), if you’re a bit skint, a Ford Capri will do the job; 1 litre can of ether; 1.5 litre Castrol GTX oil.

Method of preparation:
1. Pour the ether into the carburettor. This will turn the car into a dragster.

2. Drive for 300 metres at maximum speed and try not to crash. This will fuse the speedometer, making it tender.

3. Using a sharp knife, cut the tyres into BBQ-sized nuggets

4. Drench the briquets in Castrol GTX oil and set ablaze.

5. When thick black smoke is engulfing your garden, throw on the dashboard.

6. When melted and slightly browned, place a white table cloth in the middle of your garden and place the dashboard on it.

7. Shred driver’s leather seat and use as garnish sprinkled on the barbecued dashboard. Et voila, another tasty Motor dish.

Suggested wine: a decent antifreeze from Goodyear.

Useful tip: cook with unleaded if you’ve invited vegetarians.

Dutch power-disco deity Alden Tyrell didn’t send in a recipe but a mutual friend disclosed that he’s a terrible cook. Martijn Hoogendijk (AT’s real name) has finally completed his debut album and it’s every bit as impressive as we knew it would be. Times Like These (1999-2006), out on Clone, already sounds like a greatest hits compilation. For starters, there’s “Disco Lunar Module, “Hills of Honolulu” (with added Vocoder!), “Knockers” and “Phaze Me”, each a modern cosmic classic, plus a new version of his early synth-romp “Love Explosion” which now features the meaningful croon of Italo icon Fred Ventura for that authentic Rimini ‘88 vibe. On “La Voix” he blends an “I Feel Love”-ish pulse with the rhythm from Gino Soccio’s “Remember” as petite chanteuse Nancy Fortune sings of dancing in space, purring saucy sentiments. Tyrell’s style is hugely derivative—you’ve heard the fruity riffs and cascading melodies of “Voyager’s End” and “Odessa Theme” before, somewhere, but rarely performed with such panache and conviction—but the genre he’s chosen to pastiche (Italo, alternative electronic disco 1978-1983), despite its tedious hipster-nerd cachet, is still pretty obscure and this album should crossover in a significant way. In fact, the more successful it is, the more online disco creeps it’ll piss off, which will be a good move.

Richard James has whittled last year’s 40-odd vinyl-only “Analord” tracks down to ten for inclusion on his lush new Chosen Lords CD. Hopefully, Rephlex’s sensible decision to release a disc of material that was supposedly meant to remain exclusively on vinyl will annoy the die-hard fans who shelled out £100 or more on the “Analord” binder set. For the thousands of Aphex nuts who didn’t, Chosen Lords is his friendliest set since 1996’s Richard D. James Album and, compared to the vinyl, sounds crisper, clearer: his dazzling sense of spatial arrangement, of harmonious sound design, is rudely apparent from the first seconds of astonishing first track “Fenix Funk 5” onward. Although stacks of killer tracks had to be excluded (nothing from the Vitalic-y ninth; nowhere the pert pop of “VBS.Redlof.B”), it’s a balanced summary of these 11 EPs. Also, play the disc next to any trendy new record you’ve recently bought and the sheer leap in quality is staggering.

What else? The new Thomas Brinkmann disco single on Max Ernst, “Doshhammer” / “Mooshammer”, has a pretty steamy sleeve. On the 12-inch, Brinkmann and two pals offer sweetly curdled instrumentals of Jacko’s “Rock With Me” and Stevie W.’s “I Can’t Help It”. And London pair Cesare Vs. Disorder, a stylish Italian and Chilean duo who spin ketaminimal Minus business to East London rave zombies on Sundays, have a slinky EP, “No Words”, out on Mean Records. Now that minimal’s the “hot new sound”, according to Pete Tong, who’s tipping some guy called Luciano, the sky’s the limit for these two.

PIERS MARTIN

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