Stepping away from the Donna Summer guise, on this album, Jason Forrest uses and abuses a wide range of platters and mixes themtogether into a bubbly cauldron of bad tastes that stays fun andbouncy. Disco, new wave, arena rock and punk are all represented insmall one or two measure doses, and it's the way that Forrestseamlessly combines disperate sounds that makes the record remarkable.Jason Forrest first made his name by stealing someone else's.Regardless of what people thought about his music, the story at firstwas that a white dude with an iBook would have the balls to record andtour under the name Donna Summer. The name cribbing was then just apart of the act, as Forrest's modus operandi was one of plundering allsorts of records that most people nowadays would only enjoy with somedegree of ironic detachment. His approach to the sounds hasn't changedwith Shamelessly Exciting,but he's put his own name above the title this time, and his name andthe music are what should take center stage in place of the gimmick. On "My 36 Favorite Punk Songs," the title would seem to say it all, butrather than sounding like an incomprehensible mashup of two chordanger, the track plays more like a modern day disco anthem with punkenergy played for laughs.
Forrest is able to rip and steal andrecombine sounds in a way that is unique to his own take on thefractured world of breakcore. While most of the heavy hitters go fordeath metal riffs and ear-splitting noise or over-the-top scatalogicalhumor and juvenile antics, Forrest takes all the detritus from musicthat is excessively middle-of-the-road, but doesn't steer the soul ofthe tracks he plunders off course. His tunes are still wildlyaccessible and fun—tongue in cheek for sure—but there's none of theanger or reappropriation of cultural signifiers upon which the work ofmany of his peers hinges. Shamelessly Exciting comes off morelike the ultimate party mixtape, but with songs that have been mixedtogether only in tiny increments so that everything sounds vaguelyfamiliar but new all at once. Even Forrest's broken, drilly beats aremixed at a comfortable listening level for those who aren't used tospastic rhythmic assaults.
If I had one complaint about Shamelessly Exciting,it would be that the end result of all of Forrest's tinkering soundsalmost too tame and middle of the road itself. This record will nodoubt be a bridge record that introduces new people to a whole newworld of copyright abuse and regenrefication, and that can't be a badthing.
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