Okapi, Where´s the Beef? (Inflatabl Labl)

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Matt Haine´s still-relatively young label releases one of the most impressive debuts in a while. Okapi is a young fellow named Filippo Paolini by his mom and dad, who gives birth to a musical world all his own by combining the most diverse sources imaginable.

Wholly constructed on sampler, turntables, tapes and CDs, you might be tempted to think Plunderphonics or broken beats, but that is too lazy a categorization. The sheer ease with which Okapi sways from drum´n´bass, easy listening shopping music, electronic buzz and squall, Loony Toon soundtracking, a lovely tabla and violin mini-concerto, jazz stylings and oil filter commercials displays both enormous talent, a nimble mind, and a fine sense of humour.

Opening with a faux 20th Century-Fox fanfare, Okapi somehow manages to tease sounds out of an enormous roster of recorded words and music, hardly ever betraying their source, other than on the inner sleeve: Arvo Pärt, Samuel Barber and Francis Poulenc, Alva Noto, Kid 606 and Ø, Ray Conniff, Bert Kaempfert and Doris Day, Lester Bowie, Sun Ra, Univers Zero, Jaques Tati and the Marx Brothers. It is indeed a remarkable feat that, on the one hand, it is nearly impossible for the listener to identify the source material (though no North American, at least, will have trouble with the title track´s source, outtakes from a 1980s hamburger commercial); while on the other, Okapi constructs an album that is so wonderfully diverse and yet so entertainly cohesive.