Search - Alter Ego :: Why Not

Super playful and funky, but also pretty weird.

Aquarius Records | San Francisco | 03/11/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Not to be confused with the Italian Alter Ego who collaborated with Philip Jeck and Gavin Bryars on the recent reinterpretation of Bryars' classic The Sinking Of The Titanic, although come to think of it, it might be pretty amazing to hear THESE guys interpret Bryars' super somber epic.



This Alter Ego is from Germany, and they tend to mine similar ground as folks like Justice and Daft Punk, that sort of high energy, dance floor destroying good time techno, lots of heavy buzzy synths, swooping squiggly melodies, bouncing infectious rhythms, fun and funny, goofy and a bit wild. Super playful and funky, but also pretty weird.



The opener sounds like a Basement Jaxx instrumental, super fuzzy and groovy, synths snarling all over the place, some awesome fuzzy melodies, but then out of nowhere the track breaks down into this weird stumbling percussive sounding rhythmic stutter, all strange pizzicato strings and arpeggiated beats, hard to explain, completely interrupts the flow, but sounds so perfect anyway, the band effortlessly slip back into it, only to drop out and do that weird confusional breakdown a few more times. Which is precisely what makes this disc, and these guys so appealing.



All of the tracks begin with a similar template. Block rockin beats, fuzzy throbbing synths, woozy melodies, bits of dubstep, dancehall and techno, all wound up weirdly tangled electro / techno hybrids, but then things get all wonky, in a very good way, some tracks get all epic and majestic, the synths swelling into huge grandiose melodies, others fall apart into angular new wave freakouts, some sound like experimental synth jams, others end up super minimal, like some squiggly slightly tweaked take on the Kompakt sound.



On the surface, this stuff will totally hit the spot for anyone into any of the above-mentioned bands, folks who want to just hit the dancefloor and get totally lost. But for those of us with an aversion to the dancefloor, but who still dig dance music, this stuff is thick and heavy, layered and off kilter, weird and cool and just a bit f----d, without ever losing its groove."