Woebot Chunks

Really enjoying Woebot's new album Chunks; it really doesn't sound like anything else. Unless... well, the scope of it is impressive, the soundfield not really used like this before; the psychedelic soul slips through, the 70s proto-metal slabs and 80s licks are not smeared over as in the rapidly decreasing circles of the Ferraro et al contingent; you can hear the groove, just about to start, even if sometimes it's halted in it's tracks, re-aligned and then started all over again.

Boomkat'll tell you that Steinski and Position Normal might be a reference point (don't hear Dr John though) and while the, er, Bailiff's are knocking on the door I think this is misleading*, as is the idea that this is 'refreshingly un-earnest' when I'm pretty convinced it's exactly the opposite; this seems very earnest, seems to wear it's heart on it's sleeve...

(INSERT ORANGE AMP JOKE HERE)

It's important to be earnest, I think. Don't find the lack refreshing at all.

It is groovy, occasionally very groovy... the track I posted here, Argos, with it's yelps and Hair Metal slutiness is representative, but only cumulatively; the album gets to that state of Sly perfection but the journey is perhaps more interesting; lots of the other tracks sound like someone attempting to find their way towards that state of pure, sexualised groove and thumping bliss...

...which makes the track sequencing on the LP even more interesting; Argos comes at the start of the B side... as if Woebot is setting out his stall and then letting it unwind through all the antecedents, counterfactual histories, future shocks etc

I hear aspects of early 90s jungle in here... just in the edits... it doesn't sound like jungle... bits remind me obscurely of Quiet Sun, an underrated slice of prog weirdness... there's even a slight dash of a more relaxed, les hyper, Shangaan Electro too in one of the tracks, which ends up sounding not unlike the way I thought Vampire Weekend might sound before I'd heard them, when everyone was bigging up the African appropriations, rather than their C86 appropriations...

If The Osmonds had really gone for their Crazy Horses track/tack, started stealing from other Funkadelicates as well as Zeppelin and then all got laryngitis before they started to add their vocal parts...

I like the way that the whole album is clearly based on joy as an emotion, especially at a time when lots of people are increasingly turning towards the dark; this is the flipside to Raime, the light cousin; using Soul, Funk and ecstatic Zeppelins in place of Goth and Tech... it's a bold move and one that pays off big time...

It's an unsettling and smart album and it really makes sense as an album - it even makes sense to have it on vinyl because you really ought to flip it over, that seems an integral part of the experience.

You. Need. To. Flip.



*Boonkat is always misleading. They've mislead me so many times I'm thinking about leaving them for Chelsea...