Bikini Machine : Monkey Bum Bum Boogie

Okay, aside from having one awesome song name, what does this song have going for it? Well, first of all, it's by Bikini Machine, a French band named for the titular contraption in the camp flick Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine. There's not much on the interwebs about them, alas, but they do have a few albums out. Their sound is electronic-oriented dance rock, similar to Hot Chip, but they lean more towards the pop spectrum.

"Monkey Bum Bum Boogie" is a nifty slice of dance rock about, well, doing the monkey bum bum boogie I suppose. It's got a groovy little backbeat, reminiscent of the 60's, with a bit of organ mixed in with the rock guitars. The vocals echo 60's-style funky R&B, with an almost Temptations-like delivery. But even with its retro trappings, it's decidedly modern, draped in swathes of electronica and wrapped in the production styles of today. You could easily toss this on at an underground rave or a Northern Soul rave-up. It'd fit either nicely.

"Monkey Bum Bum Boogie" can be found on Bikini Machine's debut release, 2003's An Introduction to Bikini Machine. Being French and not particular popular, their discs are tough to find, but Amazon has a couple. It's a great, fun record, just in time for summer.

And with that, song #100, I leave you temporarily.  I love sharing music, but this writing thing, while fun, is starting to push other more important things aside, so I'm going to set it aside for a while.  Once summer seriously kicks in, I would like to get back to it, because I do enjoy it.  But I gotta stop & catch up on some other stuff first.  Thanks for listening.

[You can listen to Bikini Machine's "Monkey Bum Bum Boogie" by navigating to the post "Song100" and clicking or right-clicking on the title or the link.]

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The Mae Shi - Summer in Gommorah

Who the hell are the Mae Shi? I've barely heard of them, but I love 'em. They do really noisy pop-inflected rock. But really, really noisy. And broken.

I'm a sucker for deconstructed pop-rock. That is, you take a normal pop/rock structure, you know, bands and a songs with verses and choruses and hooks and melodies, and you break it up and break it down. You do whatever you want inside that structure, as long as it's still recognizable as a pop/rock structure. Mainly, that you're a band and the piece is a "song" and has a hook. For some reason, I really dig that. So bands like the Mae Shi and U.S. Maple and some of John Zorn's side projects really appeal to me.

This song is a straight ahead rocker, not too far from something a late 60's garage band might have produced, but it's chock full of overdriven guitar, electronic noises, whoops and hollers, and just basically the noise of people rocking out and having a great time. Some of Mae Shi's stuff is far more experimental, but I went with something more straightforward cuz I didn't want to scare y'all.

This tune, "Summer in Gommorah" is off an EP of theirs called To Hit Armor Class Zero. (Yes, I believe that's a D&D reference.) The only thing I don't like about this EP is that the 5th song is a 50-minute-long noise goof-off. Sometimes I like that sort of thing, if it's done well, but this one is pretty boring. The first four songs are great though and their other LPs are all damn good too, with Hillyh and Heartbeeps topping the list.

(No post yesterday, because I was out sick. Soon, I hope to have some back-ups posts to cover spots like that, but I don't have enough yet that I feel comfortable posting them out.)

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