(01.14.05) As usual, the IDM-List is debating what IDM is, what went wrong, and all that. By custom I replied with my IDM has sucked for the last few years e-mail, then read similar comments on Philip Sherbourne’s blog and a guest blogger for Sasha Frere-Jones. Anyway, all of this made me reconsider writing another here’s a good IDM album despite all the crap out there to review.
Global Goon’s Family Glue is a truly excellent repose of what IDM should and should not be, but the Goon CD came with a copy of E-Rock’s Thumb Zine –a small press mag from
the 90s, chock full of all the goodness IDM used to muster. Thumb
contains all those early Morr Music releases that entranced us, plus Mouse on Mars, groups I’d never heard of, and reviews from everything from Mego to Consumers Research and Development. Some of those dudes became indie-ized and hence famous and others just released the same mediocre thing for 5 years and faded away. Electronic music might suffer from what Frere’s friends call “social content or change” (i.e. it ain’t got no culture or message it’s putting forth), but what it really lacks is good exposure.
Family Glue could really convince some of the many Aphex clones out there to get it all back to songs. Goon knows how to play all sides of the IDM fence coating music that references IDM‘s clichés while transcending them simply by pushing all AFX/Pusher’s song types, chewing them around for awhile, and making their characteristics his own. Consider Family Glue to be the good natured cousin steeped in his heritage, but twisting shit to his own drummer. A whimsy of exploration unseen in electronic music for years is accentuated by a 12 string bass that lets loose jazz-inflected sub-thumps that don’t go all virtuous like Tom Jenkinson. Family Glue does what any good IDM does, it makes you wonder what type of music you’re listening to. Genres become like Bubble Gum and Goon makes berry-licious, chocolate-mushroom flavored tunes that slack off so suddenly, their apathy to categorization is astonishing.
Not to press a point, but here’s basically the deal here: Global Goon doesn’t give a shit about being
new, he just likes to make good tunes, and in turn somewhere down this Shepherd’s road to music making, he fell out of IDM‘s stereotypes and liked that noise. Family Glue is the noise of slippage when ambition gets lost and sheer joy of playing brings immaculate invention. Gives 808s mouths and lets them toke up while Glue’s signature track, “Dead Weird Keks,” would be the soundtrack of our fair synth’s stumbling rumble back home. A solid teenage spree of synthesizers gone wrong, history in the twisting, and pop music made new again.
Family Glue is out now on J-HOK Records as a CD release. It is also available domestically on Audio Dregs (with slightly different track titles) as CD/LP.
