AMON TOBIN Supermodified Ninja Tune

Not only does Amon Tobin’s ability to make impossible beats sound real make Supermodified an album that has to be heard, but the quality of the music will make listeners want to hear it again and again. The stuff on this album is mindblowing. Tobin fuses bits of breakbeats, swing, funk, jazz, soul, and biz- zare percussive effects into a cohesive sound unique to him. Supermodified has the ambience : of a 1930’s film spliced with: spaghetti westerns and early: 90’s ganster movies. You must | hear it to believe it.

-SML

AIR The Virgin Suicides Virgin

French electronica duo, Air, provide atmospheric instrumen- tals to set the tone to Sophia! Coppola’s debut film. The!

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music sounds like a per- , fect combination of! Angelo Badalementi’s warm Twin Peaks soundtrack and the icy analogue synthetic score from A Clockwork | Orange. It’s dark, trippy and an all around enjoy- ! able listen.

-SML

EVE 6 Horrorscope

BMG

If you were to play any one of the songs on _ Horrorscope twelve times in a row, you would get the same effect as if you lis- tened to the whole album. Well, I may be exaggerating a little, but EVE 6 aren’t a band that would make me jump around if I had an opportunity to see them perform a live gig. After a few listens, I have developed a cer- tain distaste for their lyrics, which are all pseudo-intellectual : mouthfuls that don’t have any: rhythm (like this sentence).

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XTC Wasp Star: Apple Venus Vol. 2 TVT

XTC are perhaps the most con- sistently good pop band making music today and, unfortunately, nobody knows who they are. But ! that doesn’t matter for the few! people who do buy Wasp Star! (or any other XTC Album for! that matter), because they’ll be! treated to some rockin’ good:

tunes that they won’t be able to get out of their heads. Convinced yet? Here’s a line for the ads: It’s smart, it’s fun, it’s pure XTC (Ha!).

-JIC

TREBLE CHARGER Wide Awake Bored BMG

Chances are, you’ve probably heard the first single from Wide Awake Bored, “American Psycho.” Thank goodness all of the songs on this album don’t sound like that (is it just me, or do the guitars at the beginning of that song sound like kazoos?) There are actually a few good songs on the disc, but I’m not likely to be popping it into rota- tion a regular basis.

-JIC

TRON MAIDEN Brave New World EMI

Yes, they can still rock, and yes they still sing about Satan, para- noia, mythic creatures, and nomads. It’s so refreshing to finally hear a metal band that adds a bit of mystery and fanta- sy to their music when most hard rock acts today just sing about “nooky” and their inflated egos. Let’s hope more artists fol- low Maiden’s lead and make intelligent, tolerable metal

records. -SML

ORISKAS A Lo Cubano EMI

Oriskas rap their hearts out and I don’t have a sweet clue what they’re saying. I never learned any hip hop lingo in Spanish 101 and now I’m regretting it. I can see it now: “Professora, ,cémo se dice blunt en espafiol?” Despite the language barrier, the album is pretty dope with a Latin flavour to boot.

-JIC

MODERN TALKING Year of the Dragon BMG

The album cover is hilarious and so is the spoken word part at the beginning of the first track when a husky-voiced man says, “I know we're two worlds apart,/but I want you in my world./I’m a rapper,/and you’re my China girl.” The Chinese orchestra music is funny too, but it just gets sad as soon as it breaks into the dance music. Dance music in general is sad and at around the fifty minute mark of this seventy-two minute album, I wanted to throw my CD player against the wall.

-IC