That generic sounding yet particularly apt title is a cover for an album that serves up everything from vocoder-laced electro-pop to radiophonic workshop tinkerings, further reinforced by an array of unusual, almost extraterrestrial elements that are then sewn together to form the humanoid Frankenstein’s monster that is Muzika Electronic.
[Release page] Brad Rose clearly has a taste in music that’s as wonderfully weird and eclectic as John Twells—whose Type label resembles that of Digitalis these days—and both curators are on a clear mission to release wonderfully consistent, high quality editions of as diverse a selection of music as possible. The product of this is both delighted, like-minded collectors with similarly manifold tastes, and an extensive catalogue of releases for the casual listener to dip into. In the midst of a slew of recent critically acclaimed releases hailed as essential debuts (Motion Sickness of Time Travel, Paco Sala), exemplars of noise-based experimentation (Perispirit, Decimus) and standout, synth-based nostalgia fests (Jürgen Müller or Ricardo Donoso) you end up with some genuinely peculiar releases like Muzika Electronic.
Swedish duo Jan Svensson and Johan Sturesson have been releasing their brand of proto-techno, dance and techno-pop music under the name Frak on small independent labels for nigh-on 25 years. The distinctly seventies, psychedelic sleeve art playfully suggests that being off your mash on ecstasy pipes wouldn’t exactly inhibit one’s enjoyment of the enclosed material. That generic sounding yet particularly apt title is a cover for an album that serves up everything from vocoder-laced electro-pop to radiophonic workshop tinkerings, further reinforced by an array of unusual, almost extraterrestrial elements that are then sewn together to form the humanoid Frankenstein’s monster that is Muzika Electronic.
You’ve got springy, bouncing and twittering analogue squelchtronica on “Tristesse Dance,” spiral-eyed, knob-twiddling wibb-wobblery and glittering confetti showers on “Voyage No. 1” and strands of Orbital “Style”-like tingling stylophone zither across streams of modem data babble on “Katamorph.” There’s the vocoded gurgles of freaky, fish-people on a bed of modular synths in “Varja Dag,” looped feedback, BBC-B microcomputer startup bleeps, soaring synths and skull-rapping plonks enrobing “Beat Dyslexia,” and robot chatter, bird twitter, siren sounds and proto-techno beats clipping into “Choosing Format.”
Perhaps most memorable, though, are Frak’s almost Kraftwerkien techno-pop moments, such as the plippity-plop and detuned bloopity-bleep of “As You May,” skewing analogue keys with an ominous undercurrent of grizzly, processed electric guitar stings that are time-stretched and pitch-bent into all manner of curiously warped shapes, or the sublime “In Order To Create” that brings the handclaps and furry vocoder vox together with computer squelch, gurgle and modular synth belch to create a wonderful slice of loping 80s futurepop. The album never ceases to surprise, and even better is the conglomeration of almost all of the above together with Neuropolitique-esque, experimental techno rhythms in the driving dance-track “Pulse-Crack.”
Muzika Electronic is as musically diverse in and of itself as it is a wonderful microcosm of the Digitalis Recordings label, the plethora of styles Frak have absorbed into their work a fitting reflection of Brad Rose’s dedication to releasing a blizzarding array of albums from all colours in the musical spectrum. Couple that with with its sense of LSD-fuelled fun and wild abandon and Muzika Electronic becomes even more compelling, whether dipped into on a random playlist or heard from beginning to end. Initial vinyl copies are available on alarming, pea-green vinyl.
Muzika Electronic is available on Digitalis Industries. [Release page | Bandcamp page]
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