H.E.A.D.
97 98
(Caipirinha)
As a label, Caipirinha has always kind of thrown me for a loop. While releases by individual artists didn't quite stick with me (like Somatic's New Body), different compilations that they put out (Deutscher Funk and the Modulations: Cinema For The Ear soundtrack) really worked for me. Still, I have to give them a lot of props, as they're not only releasing some great compilations like the above, but they've put together some good films on the electronic music scene (Synthetic Pleasures and the aforementioned Modulations). Even though a lot of their releases haven't stuck with me, they've done a lot to help advance the genre.
Which finally brings me around to this release by H.E.A.D. As a collaboration between Khan and Kerosene (the two people behind the group H.E.A.D), the album really doesn't sound much like anything either of them would have done individually. While Khan had a harder, more minimal edge to his sound, Kerosene had a bit of a funky edge, but both of them were much harder than the light electronic noodling of H.E.A.D.
Before you think that I'm completely knocking the group, let me explain a little bit more about their songs. The disc starts out with "Little Asian Girl" and some simple intertwining keyboard melodies and some little samba type beats before breaking off into a nice little piano solo. There aren't too many dynamics in it (nor on the rest of the album for that matter), but it's a short track and it manages to works a lot better than some of the tracks that drag on for far too long. One of those very tracks is the second one entitled "Welcome Illegal Immigrants (ship edit)." After a fairly interesting 2 or more minutes of drone-type stuff at the beginning of the track, it drops off into more of those same squiggly light-muzak keyboards and fairly standard beat structures with little bits of piano rolls.
The trend continues on the third track "Notorious Dead," but changes up nicely on the fourth track "I'll Be Dissing You." Instead of keeping the same sort of sounds as on the first two tracks, the duo drops off into a track that sounds like a Autoditaker-era Mouse On Mars track. It's a nice little gurgling track that has a few well-placed bursts of noise for good measure. After going back to their early sound again on another track, the group then goes to a little darker sound on "It's Funky Enough, It's Fast Enough." Even though it isn't fast enough to do much other than chill-out to, it's still one of the better tracks on the release, simply because the guiding sounds on the track are interesting enough (and not too repetitive) to drag along the fairly simple rhythm.
So goes the whole album. While there are some interesting tracks, most of them simply linger on far too long or don't change up enough to draw much interest. The disc has a light, funky sound that might make it good for background noise at a hip, martini party or something, when you don't want to have to worry about distractions. For some reason, I just can't shake the thought that I'll be hearing this sometime in the next few years when I'm riding in an elevator or playing in a dentist office.
Rating: 4
