Norway - Full Moon 177 - 02/18/11
It's a label showdown!
Metronomicon Audio vs. Jester Records - Round 20
Various Artists: 2.0
(2005 Metronomicon Audio: MEAU.0020.CDR)
vs.
[unreleased]
(Jester Records TRICK-020)
Welcome to round 20 in the label showdown series between Metronomicon Audio and Jester Records!
Since we've more or less totally missed out on reviewing the output of these two great labels, we are going
through their entire catalogues, matching the releases from each label consecutively against each other.
Humorously counting goals
and giving out yellow
and red cards, soccer style -
but first of all reviewing the music. For more introductory information on this label match, see
round 1.
Match preview
Tiny Disasters On/Off is presented in the typical Metronomicon fashion - a CD-R packed in a flexible plastic sleeve with a cardboard folder and insert, containing art & information.
Reportedly, TRICK020 from Jester Records was also supposed to be a compilation album, but as far as I know, it has not yet been released.
Seeing Jester has gone back using holes in their catalogue numbers before, they might do this again, and if TRICK020 is ever
used, we will also go back, inserting a review of it here. Until then, round 20 is a walkover match for Metronomicon.
The match
Metronomicon Audio continue their policy that every tenth release should be a sampler, so her
is 2.0, again consisting (it seems) of brand new tracks, not included in earlier releases.
A lot of new names show up here, and it's hard to tell if some are pseudonymes for existing
people in the Metronomicon circle, or newcomers. But Center Of The Universe is the first one out,
and "A Waste Of Time?" finds them in their Casio bli-bloppy plastic toy music mood, of which I
am no big fan. Lower Than Lo-Fi presents "Sand", a ballad with calm, but rather forgettable guitar strumming.
In the same vein, but with female vocals and somewhat more interesting is the fragile & cosy "How Great Thou Art"
from Hanny. International And Coffee presents the longest song title with "We Are Going On A Summer Holiday If You Wanna Come You Better Start Or You'll Sink Like A Stone Cause The Tides They Are A'Changing",
an instrumental with acoustic guitar and some xylophone playing that just about anybody with some rhythmic sense could
come up with on the fly. The first really interesting track is Täppas Strepens' "Evil Kids With Spraycans",
taking another campfire-song blast at the rich pricks of this world. While his tunes may sound like nothing out of the ordinary
and very similar to one another, his lyrics are the main treat. I was a little surprised to see the post-rockers Samuel Jackson 5
showing up here, until I noticed that their member Thomas Meidell has worked on a couple of earlier Metronomicon releases.
Anyway, their version of "Charlie Foxtrot Queen" (the song is also included on their 2005 album Easily Misunderstood)
stands out as a band effort on this sampler, a little taster from this fine band.
Cyrano goes cheesy synth-pop with "I Did Not Say It", sounding like a freaky Datarock demo.
Jetsetnjet kicks in with an intense new wave punk-pop rave-up curiously titled "Billy Idol",
Now's "And" is totally skewed out-of-tune acid-cottage-disco, and Kallioinia's
"Små Munkarnas Disco" sounds like Swedish children's discopop with absolutely horrible pitch-controlled vocals.
Ergo's "My Pine Eye 4 President" and Helene Rickhard's "D-Stør" are a rather repetetive and forgettable
instrumentals. Rune Elias Helgesen presents "Orgel, Tallerken, Drill, Hammer, Gitar" ("Organ, Dish, Drill, Hammer, Guitar").
As the descriptive title suggests, it is experimental stuff.
Magnus Moriarty™'s "The Desert Will Bloom With Tonic Powder" is as expected, nice, but too short!
Brugata Blogstyle Crew & Stian's "DADGAD" is a kind of acoustic Arabic blues jam with xylophone, string instruments, sax and tablas (I guess), simple
but it works! Not quite on par is Koppen's "Slightly Loose Grip Of It As If It Was Relatively Lukewarm",
which is a fragmented synthetic hip-hop cut-and-paste job, like inserting Beck into a pin-ball machine.
Following this is MeJamYouSpam's j-pop tv commercial take "50 Sneezes For One Orgasm".
The Hy's continues this somewhat cheesy section with their slightly frantic bluegrass-new-wavy "Welcome",
setting the pace for Skarnspage, whose relentless psycho-riffing of "Avancer, Avancer" is even more frantic.
The balkan-instrumental "In A Hurry" brings nothing new from Now We've Got Members, and is disappointing
after the magnificient Tiny Disasters album, but it's perhaps an outtake or
done eh ... in a hurry ... Tr-Ond goes darker with "Not Necessesarily A Miracle" (sic), a reflective and moody instrumental with no huge
emotional impact. Julians Cave's "This Is Your Comback, Deepika" is
a sweet short lullaby rounding off the 2.0 sampler.
To sum it up: Large parts of this sampler are filled with what feels like left-hand creativity and more or less aimless
toying around, probably more fun to make than to listen to. Only a handful of tracks are really worthy of repeated listenings,
perhaps deserving a goal or two more, but relatively speaking, all the familiar Metronomicon artists present here have delivered
better stuff before, making this an easy release to skip from Metronomicon, and probably not a recommended starting point,
as a sampler can sometimes be.
Match result: Metronomicon Audio 1 () - Jester Records 0
Next match
Next head-to-head meeting is the Koppen CD My Fashion Statement Is Scrambled Eggs from Metronomicon Audio which is up against
the Kåre João release Sideman from Jester Records.
Copyright © 2011 Knut Tore Breivik 
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