Imagine my astonishment when this unassuming new CD from Amsterdamproducer Tom Holkenborg turned out to be the most painfully dire albumI've heard in a decade. Radio JXL: A Broadcast From The Computer Hell Cabinis so entirely rotten on all fronts, it's almost refreshing. From theawful album title to the plug-ugly cover art, this is the album to playfor people who think that everything has some kind of redeeming value.This proves that those people are wrong. Radio JXL has noredeeming value. It has negative redeeming value. The mere existence ofthis album actually detracts from the work that good musicians aredoing. Junkie XL is what would happen if you multiplied Fatboy Slim'sworst song times Moby's worst song to the power of The Crystal Method'sworst album. It is slickly-produced stadium-rave trash for the newgeneration of retarded fat girls on MDMA. It's the soundtrack togetting a toothy blowjob from a guy in a rainbow wig and plasticclothes. An array of guest artists humiliate themselves by contributingguest vocals on this atrocity. Peter "Legalize It" Tosh goes throughthe Kingston motions over Holkenborg's track, one of the moreoffensive, ill-conceived desecrations of dub yet conceived by aEuropean. Dave Gahan participates in an overblown travesty whichmanages to make latter-day Depeche Mode sound positively ingenious bycontrast. Why has Gary Numan lowered himself to contributing vocals to"Angels," a song which had me pining for the glory days of top-40 raveanthems from the likes of Praga Khan and Sunscreem, which seem sotasteful in retrospect. I'm not even going to mention the tracks withChuck D and Robert Smith. Fuck, I mentioned them. Sorry. Remember whenMTV "broke" electronica circa 1994, and every suburban kid in Americawas running out to Circuit City to pick up the newest Urbal Beatscompilation? Tom Holkenborg doesn't think anything has changed in theintervening decade. He lives in a universe where The Prodigy still havenumber one hits and all that every consumer really wants is a raveremix of an Elvis Presley song. Which he provides, by the way, in theform of "A Little Less Conversation," a catastrophe of near-Biblicalproportions. I couldn't bring myself to listen to the bonus disc ofremixes. Frankly, I'm surprised I got as far as I did. samples:
- Don't Wake Up Policeman (Featuring Peter Tosh and Friends)
- Angels (Featuring Gary Numan)
- A Little Less Conversation (Featuring Elvis Presley)
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