Described on the Bungalow website as "style:lofidubhousediskopunknoise, bigbeat, stomping house, absurd samples,looped dialogues, glamour pop. Framed by the beautiful intro and outroyou are drawn into a different world." The intro and outro they refer toare mock Holiday Inn style lounge act audience introductions that I preferto skip over. This is Bungalows last release of 2000. The website tells us"Bungalow will change its structures and start a new partnership fromnext year on". I wonder just what that means. Bungalow introduced whatthey called 'clubpop' in the mid-90's. The sound was perfected in Japanon labels like Escalator, Readymade, and Trattoria. The 'easy' side ofBungalow found a home in Spain's Siesta Records, and the offbeat popin Spain's Elefant Records. That has left Bungalow in some sort of middleground - a little bit of this, a little bit of that, which I do not believe wasthe labels intention. I remember their early manifesto stating thatBungalow was to be a style as well as a sound; it was to be a gatheringplace for a world community of people who love technology, are notafraid of dance music, think Combustible Edison were way ahead of theirtime innovators, and still thrill to the sound of a good pop song. I'll becurious to see what the 'new structure' they speak of entails... As for thisrecord, nothing on it is as good as their side of the split 7" Bungalowreleased with them and Ursula 1000. Stereo Deluxe's song from that split("Groovy Boy") is not on this debut full length. The second song is theircurrent single "Soul Sauce", a horn infested big beat dance instrumental.There is a second version of the song later in the disc as well. Both arecompetent, but neither offer anything you haven't heard many timesbefore. "Lincoln Continental (feat. Lato)" sounds a bit like Two-Tone skaby The Specials or Fun Boy Three, though not as magical as they are."Riddle Me This" is one of my faves with it's (Batman TV series) Riddlersamples, though they are not used as creatively as even I could imagine.In fact, much of this album to me does not take full advantage of thesource samples they've used. Where I really expected to love this album Ijust find myself thinking that it is O.K.
