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Fujiya & Miyagi :: "Electro Karaoke In The Negative Style"Electro Karaoke In The Negative Style (2007)
Fujiya & Miyagi have, over the last several months, consistently caused me to make a fool of myself. I don’t really hold it against them -- it’s sort of inevitable in my case -- but man are they good at it. There’s something irresistible about those thick, stupid-easy bass lines and kitschy electro touches that always gets my hips shaking. Transparent Things lays this on thick with a healthy dose of self-referential white-boy funk. It comes off as sort of the goofball cousin to Moon Safari, and now that Air have lost the plot I’m glad someone is keeping the world safe for danceable electro-pop.
“Electro Karaoke in the Negative Style” is all stupid, grinning, toe-tapping fun. Sure, the thing has a grand total of one line of lyrics for a six-minute song, but then again verbosity is not really the band’s strong suit. We start with the straight-ahead drum line with simple bass, and then hit the vaguely anthemic electro portion in the center. The band is playing negative karaoke here, so when the song hits its final third and morphs into “What Goes On” it seems not only totally appropriate but extremely cool. It’s nice to see Fujiya & Miyagi trying to reject the label they’ve been getting as Can wannabes, and while covering the Velvet Underground may not be the best way to do that, it’s certainly a step in the right direction. The tongue is tucked firmly in the cheek, but where else would we want it?
Peter Hepburn :: 22 January 2007 |
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