Cheap Fun is out. How so very nice that this record is out. For a good while, some of these tracks have been floating around in a number of forms in a number of heads quite distressed to lack an actual piece of vinyl from which to invoke them at will. The wait is over. Cheap Fun is the greatly anticipated follow-up to Tacteel’s 2001 Butter for the Fat EP. Format-wise, we don’t know what kind of object it is: eight tracks, 23 minutes, the common nomenclatures do not apply. To emerge, this record had to carve its own special shape, as it carved its own unique take on a number of genres: style-wise it’s an even stranger beast, firmly steeped in hip hop, but channel-hopping between all kinds of machine-produced forms, mostly techno and electro.
Side A opens with “Keratine” and, Shorty, it’s your birthday but let’s have it in a park. It’s Sunday and we got big pink balloons and creamy cakes and the girls want to double-dutch in micro skirts and the boys are all around clapping like seals on crack. The grass is young and tender, the air is thin, fragrant and fast and we got fluorescent super-squirters but, hey, look out for grandma. We got happy chanting girls showing up a wondrous half-second to ecstatic effect and giving way to what sounds like timestrechted bliss and we got that bouncing ball giving the day a metallic edge, making sonic events unfold in half-time and double time all at once, and everything sounds glittery and highly detailed and oh so simple.
But life is not a park (Lisa Lopez notwithstanding) and “Dressed in Polyester” seems to come from some not-so-distant hyperspeed future. Hardcore hip hop finds new synthetic clothes as its menacing stab-heavy swagger is layered with a dancehall-ish lilt and crackling analog electro synths. Can we say “wonderful textures”? Yes we can. Coming to a timeline near you.
“Où va l’argent?” Literally: Where does the money go? Is there another question for our times? Except maybe “Where did our love go?” but it’s been tackled before. And, starting off all cute and lovely and shrill before getting pummelled by huge swatting snares and dull kicks, this track seems to answer both conundra anyway.
Then “Emofuck”, a kind of “Heartbleed Anthem” for an all-industrial nation, follows up and wraps this investigation into love and murder. In full brooding mode, over a worn-out drum box, the synth line swirls and mutters and laments, while a plaintive bird call tries to attract some comforting creatures, preferably females, and blue-haired. All the elements seem beamed from different vintage aural timelines. No foppish mannerisms or faux wretchedness here. Something is crying and it’s not for show. Or is it?
Did I tell you that all these tracks clock under three minutes? A lesson in economy and concentration in those most sprawling of times. With side A all tight and taut like Evangeline Lilly, side B allows for more breath and breadth.
“Now Do The”: Please invent a brand new dance craze right now. The truncated command launches the hugest slab of ghettotechjukebaltimorebooty ever. Straight freaknik material. This is what happens when Miami Bass-derived sonics become the new musical Esperanto, when clubland gets swallowed whole by the ass-shaking vernacular: Paris is grinding along with Chicago, Rio or Cape Town. This track is so ridiculous. With gigantic window-shattering beats, incredible timing and digital trickery, Tacteel summons every trick in the booty book with the irony-free abandon and effortless assurance that only comes with true devotion.
Next are two love letters to all things beat-oriented where Tacteel applies his trademark quasi-arrhythmic style to hard-hitting elegance (“Beats Like That”) and illusory idylls (“Let You Know in Advance”). This is how you do heartfelt melancholy without resorting to the tear-jerking clichés of the ballad. These songs are slow-moving yet tense and urgent. Please do notice how they end by hinting at a rebirth. Sadness can be bouncy too.
The last track is a locked groove of the glowing, transcendent and bottomless variety, so this record has no reason to leave your turntable, ever.
By the way, we’re very proud of that Sempé cover, perfectly framed by our own Akroe. Sempé, of Petit Nicolas and New Yorker fame, is one of the fathers of our visual conscience, i.e. he’s one of our fathers.
Cheap Fun: introducing a whole new set of glowing styles for the world to keep on keeping on to.
Side A opens with “Keratine” and, Shorty, it’s your birthday but let’s have it in a park. It’s Sunday and we got big pink balloons and creamy cakes and the girls want to double-dutch in micro skirts and the boys are all around clapping like seals on crack. The grass is young and tender, the air is thin, fragrant and fast and we got fluorescent super-squirters but, hey, look out for grandma. We got happy chanting girls showing up a wondrous half-second to ecstatic effect and giving way to what sounds like timestrechted bliss and we got that bouncing ball giving the day a metallic edge, making sonic events unfold in half-time and double time all at once, and everything sounds glittery and highly detailed and oh so simple.
But life is not a park (Lisa Lopez notwithstanding) and “Dressed in Polyester” seems to come from some not-so-distant hyperspeed future. Hardcore hip hop finds new synthetic clothes as its menacing stab-heavy swagger is layered with a dancehall-ish lilt and crackling analog electro synths. Can we say “wonderful textures”? Yes we can. Coming to a timeline near you.
“Où va l’argent?” Literally: Where does the money go? Is there another question for our times? Except maybe “Where did our love go?” but it’s been tackled before. And, starting off all cute and lovely and shrill before getting pummelled by huge swatting snares and dull kicks, this track seems to answer both conundra anyway.
Then “Emofuck”, a kind of “Heartbleed Anthem” for an all-industrial nation, follows up and wraps this investigation into love and murder. In full brooding mode, over a worn-out drum box, the synth line swirls and mutters and laments, while a plaintive bird call tries to attract some comforting creatures, preferably females, and blue-haired. All the elements seem beamed from different vintage aural timelines. No foppish mannerisms or faux wretchedness here. Something is crying and it’s not for show. Or is it?
Did I tell you that all these tracks clock under three minutes? A lesson in economy and concentration in those most sprawling of times. With side A all tight and taut like Evangeline Lilly, side B allows for more breath and breadth.
“Now Do The”: Please invent a brand new dance craze right now. The truncated command launches the hugest slab of ghettotechjukebaltimorebooty ever. Straight freaknik material. This is what happens when Miami Bass-derived sonics become the new musical Esperanto, when clubland gets swallowed whole by the ass-shaking vernacular: Paris is grinding along with Chicago, Rio or Cape Town. This track is so ridiculous. With gigantic window-shattering beats, incredible timing and digital trickery, Tacteel summons every trick in the booty book with the irony-free abandon and effortless assurance that only comes with true devotion.
Next are two love letters to all things beat-oriented where Tacteel applies his trademark quasi-arrhythmic style to hard-hitting elegance (“Beats Like That”) and illusory idylls (“Let You Know in Advance”). This is how you do heartfelt melancholy without resorting to the tear-jerking clichés of the ballad. These songs are slow-moving yet tense and urgent. Please do notice how they end by hinting at a rebirth. Sadness can be bouncy too.
The last track is a locked groove of the glowing, transcendent and bottomless variety, so this record has no reason to leave your turntable, ever.
By the way, we’re very proud of that Sempé cover, perfectly framed by our own Akroe. Sempé, of Petit Nicolas and New Yorker fame, is one of the fathers of our visual conscience, i.e. he’s one of our fathers.
Cheap Fun: introducing a whole new set of glowing styles for the world to keep on keeping on to.
Tracklisting
