Posted on March 19, 2009 - by Mark Zonda

From Mars to Waikiki

Kraftwerk was possibly the only band emerged from the European culture of pop offering a musical vision of  their own. They did it well, like a silent synthetic virus spreaded through their vynils ready to hit victims all around the World. The plague didn’t end, and in time it slowly evolved in many branches, from iPhone music to 8Bit Pop. There comes times when some of their descendant can emerge for a deep breath on the surface of the thousand voices echoing their vocoder anthems over the great telematic sea. It’s the case of the classy “The Gentle People”, World citizens.

Dougee Dimensional (USA, Virgo), Honeymink (UK, Aries), Laurence LeMans (France, Leo), Valentine Carnelian (South Africa, Scorpio), a stange international set made by art collective of musicians, graphic designers, and gadabouts,  pursues the way of abstract pop with a cleaver use of loops and samples.

Their attitude toward music changed a lot since their debut on 1993, a time when music was still gloriously projected on the future. It went from Glamour Pop to Shibuiya Kei. Let’s point a song among the others as example: “Chees Freak” is simply… delicious! Just listen to the song (on thei MySpace, for example) and you’ll get the impression on having “Vive La Fête“ mocking RUN DMC “King of Rock”. It’s absoutely surprising  just skipping tracks and finding THE SAME BAND having a “Journey” on a marvellous bossa in a perfect and respectful Piero Piccioni style.

It’s strange. Sometimes I look back at 1999 and I wonder how it came to be that music from that era was so much enanched and headed to the future while all we have today is having the same kiddos trying to playing the same distorted version of their skiffle roomadelic music at their cheapest way. Sometimes it really seems like we landed from Mars to Waikiki.

Blame it all on the millennium bug.

The Gentle People – “Emotion Heater” (Remixed By Yoshinori Sunahara)

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