Tuesday, March 28, 2006

I Love 1981



Soul Mekanik- Eighty One (RIP Records)

"Robots" MP3

I have always been obsessed with the early '80's. Despite breaking my nose attempting to do the freeze when I was a kid, I have also always been obsessed with breakdancing. I still collect the records and the cheesy films and have a passion for the history, the true old school, the "Boogie Down Bronx"! One of the most important cultural revolutions of all time and also a place that was nothing at all like Wisconsin, where I grew up. That never stopped us from memorizing Beat Street abd renting Breakin' 2 so many times my parents were forced to have the video store tell us it was rented out...and that was my sister asking for it! (I obviously was cool enough to have seen it in the theatre with my ultra-hip mom...who called to tell me she likes pier bucci btw)

ANYWAY I have posted about breakdancing enough on this site, but when I saw that the title of Soul Mekanik's album was "Eighty-One", my eyes lit up. Could this be the Paul Hardcastle of the 21st century? Well, not quite but the album has some really good tracks and I like the modern yet old school electro feel. The sound is difficult to describe but there are elements of house, minimal techno, funk, and electro with some nicely constructed vocoder that I am always a sucker for. "Robots" is the first track I heard by Soul Mekanik because it was used on the fantastic Fabric 26- Global Communication (Mark Pritchard and Tom Middleton) CD. I can't say enough about that installment of the Fabric series...it is a must have and covers a lot of ground from glitchy IDM to great tech house tracks that Middleton selected.

Robots Robots Robots Automatic Electronic

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Fred Newell is how tall?

Anonymous said...

Pity... I keep getting a page not found message on this one..