Third Eye Foundation
I Poo Poo On Your Juju
(Merge)
If you're a fan of Third Eye Foundation, you may or may not already know that I Poo Poo On Your Juju is to be the last release for the group. Although there's technically only one new track on the release (it's a collection of remixed and reworked tracks, plus one unreleased track), it had might as well just be another release by Matt Elliot, because it has the moody qualities of Third Eye Foundation all over it and probably ends up being one of the most diverse and accessible releases.
Although he hasn't completely ruled out the possibilty of coming back at some point (although probably not under the same name and not doing the same things), Elliot announced before the release that he's simply going to spend his time doing other things for awhile (the fact that he's going to be a father is probably a large part of it). For me, I can hardly imagine how he went on creating his music as long as he did anyway. Although Little Lost Soul showed a little light at the end of the tunnel, his earlier work like Ghost and You Guys Kill Me is still some of the most dark and claustrophobic electronic music that I've ever heard.
On this newest release, though, Elliot takes on all-comers and spits them out much more interesting than they were in the first place. The album opens up with an eerie interpretation of a piano piece by minimalist French composer Yann Tiersen (in which ghostly disembodied voices and other ambient sounds are added) before the gurgling, pitch bent mix of "To Describe You" by Tarwater. Remote Viewer and Urchin tracks are given an entirely new sound that somehow mixes dark with strangely uplifting before the one unreleased track drops. "Push Off My Wire" is Matt Elliot Vs Chris Morris and undecipherable vocals drift through a drill and bass haze before they get recycled and looped into strange little hiccups to close things out.
Just in case you were doubting the range of the remixes thusfar, the last three tracks on the disc cover all kinds of different ground as Blonde Redheads "Four Damaged Lemons" is turned into a melancholy piano solo before "Mute" by Faultline (from the Closer Colder album) is turned into an unrecognizable version of the original with an absolutely huge, rumbling bassline and stabbing rhythm. Probably the most interesting track (considering the source material) on the release is the closing remix of a cover of "When I Dance" that was originally written by Jonathan Richman. Although I have no idea what the original sounds like, the TEF version comes out sounding like something you'd hear crawling its way out of smokey lounge on the darkest of dark nights in New Orleans and a thick fog is covering everything.
While the album title might forever just stay a mystery (or it may just be another in his long line of word-pun titles), I Poo Poo On Your Juju is quite possibly the most interesting Third Eye Foundation release simply because it is so diverse. While there is still sort of an underlying feel holding all the tracks together, there are a couple vocal tracks, one track that has sort of a twisted classical feel, and several others that go in different directions completely. Although there are only 8 tracks on the disc, it runs about 50 minutes and doens't overstay its welcome at all. If you for some reason still haven't heard Third Eye Foundation, start here.
Rating: 8
