JOOKABOX – DEAD ZONE BOYS « New music, features, reviews, news and free mp3s

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“We get along really well, we don’t argue or get drunk and call each other bastards.”

ALBUM REVIEWS

Captain Ahab

End of Irony

(Deathbomb Arc)

Since Mika Miko split and No Age started touring the world, LA’s The Smell scene has been searching for a new, less garage-y sound, and its found it in ravesploitation.

Kele

The Boxer

(Wichita/Polydor)

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Tokyo Police Club

Champ

(Memphis Industries)

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Liars

Shepherd's Bush Empire , London

Liars have always been proponents of the idea of more – more bass, more fuzz, more weirdness.

Album Review

Jookabox

Dead Zone Boys

[Asthmatic Kitty]

8/10

The opening track of ‘Dead Zone Boys’ is the frankly startling ‘Phantom Don’t Go’, an early pointer to the crazily scattergun approach to style and genre taken by Jookabox. What sounds like looped native American singing sits uncomfortably atop an overridingly loud rhythm, whacked out frenetically and there’s a touch of electronica in there too. Somehow, it all works brilliantly. Occasionally, the album is slightly more conventional, but no less engaging. ‘You Cried Me’ is a ninety-miles-an-hour rattle through melodic chaos held together by a cartoonish vocal refrain, ‘Gonna Need The Guns’ is crunchingly heavy and laced with funk, and high point ‘East Side Bangs/ East Side Fade’ is simply sublime. Sparse in places, rich in others, the overall impact is both exciting and energising, a powerful testament to the virtues of originality and invention.

By Chris Watkeys