Unsuitable Japanese

text

After releasing what should have been a one-off bit of bafflingly amateur nursery-rhyme techno (My Favorite Clinic on Rephlex, 1997), who would have expected the RDJ-discovered Japanese duo to return with another helping? And on an Austrian label with connections to Cheap and Mego, no less! Granted, both of these fonts of Viennese eclecticism never fail to manifest a peculiar sense of humor in their releases. But why is AK making its bow with S&Vs self-admittedly ramshackle electronic pop? Oh, right S&V prefer to call it "Unsuitable Rock." Thats the overwhelming question as S&V get Mothers Goose with their Sesame Street-meets-Krush Groove. Are you ready for some real (two-year)-Old School? As this mini-album plays, the charm of these toybox trifles really starts to sink in. There is something narcotic about S&Vs scribbles, a quality that makes them strangely compelling if not quite addictive. Their busy, Crayola-colored world of low-tech synths, weirdly tuneful quasi-rap and hopelessly cheap drum machine prattle offers a welcome respite from the ultra-glossy status quo of electronic music. The spooky loops of whistling synthsound and Classical misappropriations in a "Lavenders Blue" even come across as a deliberate Dadaist-electro response to "Tubular Bells," if you can imagine that. Strip the incomprehensible vocals and "Tom, Tom of Islington" and "Cactus Man" reveal a choppy trackiness with a resonant echo of Disko B/Tresor grit. And when S&V hit the proverbial nail with just the right off-kilter glance, as they do with the uneasy Factory-era-OMD-via-Thomas Brinkmann (!) chittering minimalism of "Little Jack Horner," what initially seemed arbitrary and entirely unprepossessing begins to smack fiercely of contrivance. It helps that Unsuitable Japanese is miles ahead of the Rephlex record, a one-joke novelty item which was neither especially novel nor especially funny. By the time the truly genius final tracks of this new set roll around, S&V have let their disarmingly childish facade slip just long enough to lay bare the real joke that theyve been playing. Theirs is the last laugh, not ours; weve only the butt of their lark, certainly not the reverse. Ha ha. Much like their sadistic mentor, Mr. James, these cheeky bastards are fiendishly clever, perhaps even brilliant. For all their deliberately hackneyed rhymes and obvious melodies, Sam & Valley are as avant as they come.