Coldcut's 70 Minutes of Madness, DJ Shadow's Diminishing Returns, DJ/rupture's Gold Teeth Thief and now K.I.M.'s Miyagetogether present a convincing argument for the mix CD as a viable artform. With the sheer volume of recorded music available to the averagecrate digger — through record stores, internet auctions, GEMM, andfile-sharing — there is a larger palette than ever before for acreative individual to select and sequence a group of songs to delivera powerful aesthetic message, to alter perceptions of music and genre,and to entertain. K.I.M.'s Miyage, recently released onTigersushi, manages all three. Tigersushi is an online music communitythat specializes in leftfield dance and avant-groove. Their uniquemusical aesthetic cuts across avant-disco, krautrock, early industrial,leftfield house and modern IDM. Tigersushi Recordings, though barely ayear old, has already released a clutch of fantastic 12" singles, andtheir No G.D.M. compilation featured an impressively eclecticselection of forgotten vintage sides from the likes of Gina XPerformance, Material and Cluster. Miyage goes ten stepsfurther, kicking out a flawless set that had me scrutinizing thetracklist in wonderment. The mix is equal parts groovy and exotic,moody and surreal, fragile and extreme. There is a focused exotica viberunning through the tracks chosen, apparent from the first track, afield recording of wind blowing through an Aeolian organ on the SolomonIslands. It's the perfect lead-in for Arthur Lyman's Polynesian jazzexcursion "Ringo Oiwake." John Zorn plagiarized this track (withoutgiving credit) on his exotica album The Gift. It blendsseamlessly into a whimsical overture by French film composer Francoisde Roubaix. K.I.M. also contribute several transitional tracks to themix, using their considerable gifts to create the perfect rhythmicbridges between disparate musical ideas. Wevie Stonder's "Gypsy Chimp"is one of the most hilarious cut n' splice tracks I've ever heard, abizarrely infectious song that matches Gypsy fiddles with kazoos,jungle sounds and hicupping vocals. Cut to uber-diva Edith Piaf'sincomparable "Jezebel," and a slow dissolve to street performer andself-taught outsider Moondog's "Viking I," a beautifully primitivepiece for hand drums and xylophone. A quick journey through pipe organimprovs, Javanese tribal chanting, and Japan's wonderful Asa Chang& Junray, and we somehow end up in the middle of a rooftop-liftinggospel-disco meltdown mixed by legend Larry Levan. I'm not sure itmakes any sense, but I'm happy to be swept along in this idiosyncraticjourney. Jack-in-the-box melodies from Pierre Bastien and a treefalling in the woods segue into the overblown rock-disco of PsychicTV's "Ov Power," a welcome bit of nostalgia from the glory days ofGenesis P. After a terrific cut by cult rockers The Gun Club, the discends with K.I.M.'s rendition of The Smiths' paean to vegetarianism"Meat is Murder." It's given the laptop and vocoder treatment familiarfrom Schneider TM's cover of The Smiths' "There Is a Light That NeverGoes Out." Okay, so it's not an original idea, but it still worksperfectly, ending the disc on a note of politicism and melancholy.Simply put, this is a brilliant set, the one to beat for futurecompilers of eclectic mix discs.- Arthur Lyman - Ringo Oiwake
- Wieve Stonder - Gypsy Chimp
- Psychic TV - Ov Power
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