DJ Shitbird / Revenge SF
"Welcome to the Party" CDEP
Narnack
Records
Genres: party, electroclash
Narnack Records
381 Broadway
Fourth Floor
NY, NY 10013
Sep 6 - 12 2004 |
This type of music has only one goal in mind - to produce (or assist
the production of) fun. It is party music, plain and simple -
and it sounds something like a ridiculous petting zoo carnival sent through a 1980s
Apple computer. Not everyone's cup of tea, for sure, but a must
for those who crave the hot, sweaty body pile-up of a exo-suburban
houseparty. You know who you are.
After you spend a greater part of this sixteen-track split-EP
trying to figure out which songs are where and what bands are
responsible for them, you'll begin to notice that Welcome to the
Party is not a traditional rock record. Call it electroclash
or techno-rock or party rock or whatever, it's basically a big panoply
of energetic beats, cutting-floor melodies, ridiculous vocals, and
gushing absurdity.
Deceptively, the first half of this disc contains the evildoings of
Revenge SF, a San Francisco supergroup featuring members of Coachwhips,
Numbers, and A-Tension. It is a surprisingly polished
(through gritty) sound, featuring the loudest beats and the most
over-the-top compositions on the record. The short (typically under two
minute) compositions come at you like a teenage boy with no sense of
romance. As far as electroclash goes, this is the good stuff.
The second "half" of Welcome to the Party features
five tunes from DJ Shitbird, another supergroup with members of
The Lowdown, Comets on Fire, Big Techno Werewolves,
as well as lead singer Kristy Geschwandtner, who bizarrely
pretends (?) to be an eight year-old girl. Their songs are more
lo-fi, with a bit more tape fuzz and a less intrusive sound.
Tunes like "Party Bomb" (with a catchy electronic part) and
the self-explanatory "Elephant Dance" are cute and somewhat
entertaining, but probably won't last more than a few listens.
Besides, this stuff is always better live.
Welcome to the Party is a fine artifact of a very bizarre,
specialist genre. The enthusiasm of DJ Shitbird and Revenge
SF is infectious, and works well for party blasting, but its
lasting power - like the aforementioned teenage boy's - is pretty
limited.
80%
Matt Shimmer [Vitals:
13 tracks, distributed by the
label, released 2004] |
