Search - Various Artists :: Bikini World

Can't get enough of these surf comps! Bikini World is especially hip as it includes a passel of artists that usually avoid the hi-fi world of the compact disc, including Phantom Surfers, Untamed Youth, and the Trashwomen, as well as a bunch of bands I'd never heard of like The Royal Knightmares, The Hillbilly Soul Surfers, and Sir Bald Diddley & his Hounourable Right Big Wigs (well, that's how they spell it). As a collection, it's uniformly hot spit, especially Untamed Youth's blow torch summer epic, "Tube City" and the painfully-punned "Surfs You Right" by Finland's finest, Laika & the Cosmonauts. "Scalpin' Party" by Jackie & the Cedrics has some of the most percolating percussion I've ever encountered, but, disappointingly, they just fade out instead of come up with a proper ending. "XKE!" from Seattle's own Boss Martians, is, as you might expect, eerie and extradimensionally cool. You may think you've heard this stuff a million times, but we both know that's not enough. Gnarly. --John Chandler