April 29, 2004

Hang on the Box | Yellow Banana |Benten | China

buy it
I just love this CD! H.O.T.B. has all the qualities of lovable punk: catchy hooks you hum, raging vocals with a message, high high high energy you rock out to.

Nonstop Body | Turn Off |Benten | Korea

buy it
These Korean gals are fighting many norms in Korea with their punk defiance and they deserve high props for that. However, if they're trying to make a stand musically, practice at their craft would help them deliver their message more effectively.

April 26, 2004

Various | Cambodian Rocks |Parallel World | Cambodia

Cambodian Rocks (Parallel World): buy it
Cambodian Rocks Volume I (Khmer Rocks): buy it

This seems like a very interesting time to revisit Cambodian Rocks, the bootleg that launched a thousand armchair travelers into 60s/70s Cambodian headspace. Last year saw Parallel World re-issue Cambodian Rocks, this time on CD with several cuts added. Now a rival label has taken advantage of Parallel World's dubious legal position to put out their own Cambodian Rocks albums. But are the artists getting any credit or money at all?

April 05, 2004

OOIOO | Kila Kila Kila |Thrill Jockey | Japan

buy it
There's a paradox I've noticed in writing about new music--the more singular an artist's vision is, the longer the list of names and styles to which you're tempted to compare them. Yoshimi Yokota (a.k.a. Yoshimi P-we a.k.a. Yoshimi (who) Battles the Pink Robots a.k.a. the drummer of the Boredoms) calls this paradox to mind with her band OOIOO. Their new album Kila Kila Kila is a forest of beautiful and ever-evolving creatures. Each song carries the genes of a thousand musical ancestors but expresses them in the most unexpected mutations--birds open gills in midair and plunge into the deep, elk grow rattles on their antlers and the butterflies have giant stingers.