CD Reviews

Various Artists | A Psychedelic Guide to Monsterism Island

Lo Recordings (2009)

By GUSTAVO TURNER | May 19, 2009

3.5 Stars

Artist, graphic designer, and toy creator Pete Fowler has been instrumental in the rebranding operation the Super Furry Animals have effected on their homeland of Wales. Led by enterprising eccentric Gruff Rhys, the SFA have promoted a gentle, fuzzy brand of homegrown Welsh neo-psychedelia for which Fowler's idiosyncratic monsters serve as visual manifestation.

This conceptual soundtrack is the sequel to the impossible-to-find Sounds of Monsterism Island (2005), but whereas the earlier record had been a beautiful compilation of vintage exotica and easy-listening tracks, this one is all bespoke. Rhys's "Wild Robots Power Up" is joined by instrumentals by the Specials' Jerry Dammers, Luke Vibert, a pseudonymous Future Sound of London, library-music expert Jonny Trunk, and other like-minded castaways.

Let's hope Fowler's Monsterism project — with UK Vice magazine comics, designer toys, Internet Flash animations, and proposed cartoons — can find its rightful niche among fans of Gorillaz or Yoshimi-era Flaming Lips.

The Peth | The Golden Mile
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The Flaming Lips | Embryonic
If new albums by Super Furry Animals, 50 Foot Wave, and the Flaming Lips are any indication, 2009 is smack in the middle of a new psychedelic age.
Gorillaz | Plastic Beach
Although this is their first album without an indie-chic producer, the fake band with fake cartoon characters known as Gorillaz stay the course as a very real post-Blur conduit for Damon Albarn's quasi-apocalyptic, '80s-daydreaming, neon-pop habit.
Various Artists | Money Will Ruin Everything
Asked to describe his label Rune Grammofon's output, Rune Kristoffersen uncomfortably offers, "It's typically somewhere between improvised, electronic, contemporary . . . ," before fading off.
Various artists | Spiritual Jazz: Esoteric, Modal, and Deep Jazz from the Underground, 1968-1977
Apple-pie Mormon missionaries the Millers travel through Iran to spread the gospel of Joseph Smith among Muslims and Zoroastrians, and their kid discovers the glorious sound of the santur.
The wyrd, wyld Welsh wyrld of Gruff Rhys
In his new film Separado!, Gruff Rhys is riding around São Paulo when his Brazilian driver asks the shaggy-haired musician where he is from.
Super Furry Animals | Dark Days / Light Years
What better way to say hwyl! to this ponderous decade than with a hulking slab of psych jams from one of its most consistent and chameleonic bands?
Black and white and red all over
The most common problem afflicting video games these days is a deficit of imagination. So many releases look alike, sound alike, and play alike.
Review: Adventureland
Could the revival of the "Portrait of the Auteur As a Young Man" genre signal a new era of auteurship in Hollywood? Maybe, but Mottola, for one, hasn't quite reached that point.
Crucibles
There was room for more than one young Jewish diarist in the occupied Amsterdam of World War II. Anne Frank, who died as a teen, is a 20th-century icon. But until recently, her feisty innocence hid Etty Hillesum's fire.
Review: Alien Trespass
If you were ever a fan of those '50s and '60s sci-fi flicks whose trademarks were hoky FX, an eerie theremin soundtrack, and a rubber-suited monster, then Alien Trespass should scratch your nostalgia bone.
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