September 13, 2007

A.I., Sex & Robots
self-released, Sept. 11
Your daily hypothetical: Someone walks up to you and starts jabbering about this awesome new band that’s a cross between God Lives Underwater and Prince. You either (a) demand to know its name so you can run out and buy their record, or (b) correctly assume that you can’t find their record because the band had a short-lived relationship with a major label that carelessly blapped it out, after which they were summarily dumped when the paltry few thousand shekels the label invested in them somehow failed to turn the band into a giant ringing cash register overnight. Put less obscurely, these guys have a slam-dunk formula that redraws early Prince for the sequencer age, i.e. a lot of deep techno, hard guitars (think Mindless Self Indulgence) and rip-off-thy-clothes pop-rock mayhem. The major label screw-up in this case belongs to Dreamworks, though it may have arisen from the label going under if I recall. Highly recommended for people in search of something medium-heavy, wildly danceable and about 10 minutes ahead of its time. The sound engineering doesn’t sound at all home-brewed; production is big-league. B+ — Eric W. Saeger.