CD released: May 01, 2006
Beginning in 2003 as a one-off commission for audio weblog MUTED TONES (from which opening track "Something" is excerpted and re-edited), this debut record from GLISSANDRO 70 is the result of two years of intermittent collaboration between Toronto's SANDRO PERRI (POLMO POLPO, CONTINUOUS DICK) and CRAIG DUNSMUIR (GUITARKESTRA), This five-song full-length circles at the intersection of pop song and extended dub, cribbed lyric and wordless chant, odd meter and straight beat, Playful nods to dance music's misfit past both direct (the use of chanted quotes from MODEL 500 and TALKING HEADS) and secondhand ("Analogue Shantytown's debt to ARTHUR RUSSELL and WALTER GIBBONS) are kept in check by Dunsmuir and Perri's respective rhythmic and timbral acuities, ensuring that this is no mere exercise in exorcism, The paper-and-glue collage of the album's cover art suitably riffs on a glossy West End disco jacket of a quarter-century ago, rendering it instead as DIY bedroom cut-and-paste, The music within perfectly reflects this aesthetic: an exuberant home-studio celebration of airbrushed, pastel-coloured 80s dance music, with an emphasis on the trancey, guitar-driven, afrobeat- and dub-inflected strains of said era. |
