The Quick Brown Fox is local multimedia artist—and Weekly Alibi contributing artist—Jeff Drew’s long running solo music project. Like previous releases, Fill in the Empty Spaces relies on Drew’s skillful blending of high-grade samples and homemade beats. But Drew has made a breakthrough on this release with sharper and more full-bodied production; it’s a great sounding disc. The variety and juxtaposition of samples on FITES, harkens back to the early hip-hop of De La Soul, Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique and the sweetly outlandish, vamping horns of early Beck albums. Drew’s baritone vocals are a mellow marriage of Loggins & Messina and Gene Ween that fit his dreamy lyrical expostulations and laid back ruminations nicely. TQBF’s FITES is swank, rich in detail like a low-rider car and lush like shag carpet. Two thumbs up!
MoirŽ Gel (EP) (R and S Sounds)
Music press releases are known for hyperbole and even fabrication, but in the case of Moiré’s latest release, PR nuggets like “dancefloor hedonism,” “tripped out dancefloor experimentation” and “exhilarating futurist club music” are spot on. Accompanied by an equally trippy cover, Gel is relentless club music designed to please the senses in conjunction with other club activities like dancing and taking drugs. Possibly sex, but everyone’s probably too high wherever this music is playing. The boom-chick beat of the track “STFN” is just so straight-up disco that it hardly seems possible to build on its basic balls-to-the-wall power but, as if some kind of drug is taking hold of the drums, the beat gets weirdly complex and trance-inducing as if ascending to disco-nirvana. Every track on this EP is orange-shred powerful.
Lakker Tundra - Remixed (R and S Records)
More experimental electronic music, but less dance-y and more minimalist and ambient in the vein of mid-period Kraftwerk, with some minor Kruder & Dorfmeister flavor. I’m talking about Lakker’s well-received Tundra album. Did the world need an album of Tundra remixes? Probably not. Are remixes ever as good as the original? I can think of few examples and they’re all dub versions. Primitive World does throw down a cool version of the track “Pylon,” but it can’t overshadow Mark Fell’s version of “Oktavist”—which sounds like someone losing a game of Pong. Guest remix albums are the WPA of the music world: They exist to create work for Djs. I declare Tundra-Remixed not totally unlistenable but inferior to the original.
