Search - Fortran 5 :: Avocado Suite

Noooooo!

L. Robertson | Skokie, IL, USA | 03/21/2002

(1 out of 5 stars)

"After making a wonderful debut with Blues (1991), and following up with the hilarious Bad Head Park (1993), one thought that Fortran 5 was preparing to carve a significant niche in left-field dance pop. The sample-laden and always good-natured tracks shone with a creative intensity rarely seen in the genre. Covers of such songs as the relatively obscure Bike, by Syd Barrett (ex-Pink Floyd), made by sampling various parts of lines of comedian Sid James (kind of a British Buddy Hackett) from "Carry On Cleo", and Layla (Derek & The Dominos) read (hilariously), not sung, by actor Derek Nimmo, showed that one can make something unique out of an untapped (musically) area. With Bad Head Park, Fortran 5 began making an impact outside of the UK. It is then very hard to imagine why David Barker & Simon Leonard decided to eschew their unique sampling and keyboard in tandem style in favor of conventional keyboards-only tracks laced with computer effects of questionable choice and tiny, incomprehensible millisecond-long snippets of samples better left on the cutting room floor. The result, Avocado Suite, speaks for itself: Noooooo! Imagine Kraftwerk, but with all the creativity of Yanni or John Tesh and the style and rhythm of a toddler throwing pots and pans down a long marble staircase. Imagine endless plodding noise, with no evolution and no resolution, other than ending abruptly and moving on to a different noise. Take the sounds you hear while playing Galaga, Pac-Man, Space Invaders, or any early arcade video game, and drill them into your head for seven or eight minutes. The crude-humored picture on the cover (showing Leonard on a toilet) is a good way of illustrating what awaits the listener. Other than tracks seven through nine (of which eight is the best), which are conventional but not as annoying as the rest of the nine, the rest sound more like a testing program for an Apple IIGS or Commodore 64 computer, rather than anything meant for human consumption. Apparently others agreed with me, as it sold sparingly, and Barker and Leonard split the next year. I highly recommend both Blues and Bad Head Park. Try the Mute Records website; they almost always have all their own releases in stock...."