Liquid Cop - Data So Nice, I Saved It Twice
(self-released)
Home-recorded IDM CDRs are something I have a lot of patience for, and if you don't, then read no further. That said, there is a lot of crud out there to wade through and a lot of laptops used and abused to no discernible purpose. Liquid Cop, aka one Kevin Rearden from San Francisco, quite obviously wears his influences on his sleeve—there's the Warp crew, melting sound collage courtesy of Coil and so forth—but there's also the wiggy humor from the Tigerbeat6 bunch, which helps tremendously. What helps even more is that Rearden's not really interested in the scatological "har har, GOOFY NOISE!" aspect (though "Webcam Girl" gets a bit racy, to be sure) as he is blithely, but with purpose, gliding through all sorts of approaches as he chooses.
Fake live introductions, mashups of Our Beloved President talking about war and the like, inspired steals from Herb Alpert (the Evolution Control Committee's influence refuses to die!), household sound use and abuse Rearden credits to the influence of Herbert, single-note samples from the Clash and Britney Spears, it's all in there somehow. Results include clattering synth pop of sorts ("Prissy Goes to Beauty School"), gentle meditations on this and that punctuated by various randomness ("Pet Yr Cat, Pet Them, Pet Yrself, Then Pet Me"), carousel tunes gone a bit off ("We Want Drugs") and, well, titles that say it all ("Organ Harvesting Time at the Clonefarm"). There's also the self-explanatory "My Neighbor Sidney is From Brazil," on which Sidney himself enthusiastically sings and plays guitar (even if it's then all chopped up as needed).
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