Search - Polysics :: Hey! Bob! My Friend!

We are polysics, we are not polysics

cheshirreccat | San Leandro, CA United States | 08/15/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"being a devo fan from way back, seeing the picture of 3 tokyo mutants dressed up in yellow radiation suites and wearing 3-d sunglasses shocked an appalled me. out of pure indignation and disgust i bought their record "hey bob, my friend" and was neither shock nor appalled, i was delighted. my goodness i thought to myself, these 3 beautiful mutants of the east have so wonderfully built on the devo foundation while remaining unique and interesting. once again i am listening non stop, day and night to the sound of things falling apart. do the polysics care about food, genetics, the future, you bet...and more. the polysics provide musical calisthenics to toughen up a world gone soft."

HEART ATTACKS!

Ryan Hennessy | Albany, NY | 08/12/2002

(4 out of 5 stars)

"BOOM! EXPLODE! HEART ATTACK HEART ATTACK HEART ATTACK!!! BANG! ZAP! BRAIN BUZZ! EXPLODE! AHHHH!! LASERS!And there you have it. The best intro I could think of for the Polysics review. I really don't know where to start. So I might as well explain what they look like onstage. First off, they're Japanese. Onstage they all wear radioactivity suits and reflective wrap-around sunglasses. One guy's got a guitar, there's a girl behind the keyboard and another guy playing drums. They'd probably start up their set without warning and then go and play about an hour of non-stop heart attack-inducing music before fainting on the stage.The Polysics play something maybe best described as surf-math-rock. Imagine early Devo with a thirst for blood. This sounds like they want someone to get hurt. It's got the energy and chord changes of a surf record, but with the rabid and exacting melodies from the guitar and the new wave synths flying past your head at 1000 miles per hour, there's something more scientific going on. They're making rock music dorky again. The pictures of them in the liner notes show them all over the place in their trademark get-ups looking like Godzilla just arrived and they're the scientists here to help stop him, but really they're just here to rock you silly!"Sunnymaster" is a minute-long intro that starts with any other drum machine until it explodes, literally, and and video game synths beep and buzz for a while and guitars bring it to a raucous conclusion. The whole record sounds like a video game, come to think of it. "Buggie Technica" has a opening guitar crunch banging repeatedly to open the song, but this happens over and over again with a vocoded voice yelling something over it and you don't even think the song will get start and suddenly, BAM! The CD blows up and threatens to take your boom box with it! The song would completely fall apart if it weren't for the surf rock melodies desperately trying to keep this thing on the CD. I'm convinced that if MTV were to get a hold of this, you'd start seeing Polysics music showing up in every extreme sports program you'd see.Then starts the super-charged enigmatically titled "Plus Chicker." This features the first singing on the disc from guitarist Hiroyuki Hayashi. It's unintelligible with all the noise, and I'm guessing it's Japanese anyway. "Hot Stuff" just continues the flow. Despite the fact that this record is actually a compilation of songs from a few Japanese releases by the Polysics, it flows really well. I was also surprised that a familiar melody popped up on track 8 and I quickly realized they were covering a song by another favorite Japanese band, Pizzicato Five's "Good" from The Sound of Music. Polysic Kayo does her best to recreate the cute cooing of Maki Nomiya, while the music of course differs greatly from P5's as this is much more likely to give you an epileptic fit.This goes on for an even briefer than it sounds 33 minutes. Just a warning: Don't you ever try driving to this record, as a wreck is more than sure to happen."