Italoboyz – Bla Bla Bla

Time to bore you with another Notion review, though I was pleased with the last line:

The Italoboyz rose to prominence last year with the John Coltrane sampling Bahia, a brilliant song that was made to be enjoyed on sunny days. An album deal with Claude Von Stroke’s Mothership label soon followed, which has unfortunately given birth to one of the most annoying records I have ever heard. Marco and Federico have unwisely chosen to apply Bahia’s formula – unusual instruments not normally associated with dance music plonked on top of a 4/4 beat – to every track on the album. Someone at Mothership must have been massaging their egos a bit too much, causing them to start considering themselves avant-garde geniuses redefining techno with jazz and classical samples, rather than purveyors of sub-standard rubbish. They have given Bla Bla Bla a unique sound, but that’s probably only because someone else tried doing what they do, quickly realised it sounded shit and made something else.

The album starts with Where is London, made in collaboration with producers Masomenos. Here the chimes of Big Ben are coupled with some classical piano and a techno rhythm. Original, but it doesn’t work, and this failure sets the tone for the following 60 minutes. Next up is Chinese, where an intensely irritating voice repeating ‘I don’t speak Chinese’ is thrown together with oriental melodies and a terrible 2-note horn refrain. It’s like 10 people making one part of a song completely separate from each other then putting the results together unedited. Taka Taka Tashhh might have fared a bit better, had they not chosen to repeat the eponymous title ad nauseam for the song’s duration. It does have a touch of the Chemical Brothers about it, but where and Tom and Ed obviously know when enough is enough, this pair keep adding elements until perfectly sane people are contemplating ripping their ears off and stamping on their eardrums to avoid ever having to be subjected to such crap again. Edo Breiss is the same – underneath the unnecessary saxophone noodling is a decent house tune waiting to come out, but it’s overshadowed by a need to show off and suffers as a result.

I thought Techno Tower might offer some brief respite; sadly it wasn’t meant to be. There are too many things going on, including some chump chanting ‘bumbumbumbumbumbum’ incessantly, the occasional acid stabs and tinkling piano, all of which clash. I won’t even talk about the Salvador Dali sampling L’Anagramme.

Apart from Bahia, the only other track of note is The Pink Uniform. For once they ditch the beat and the resulting ambient piece works well. It makes you think that if they stopped classing themselves as a techno act and played around with different drums and BPMs in the same way they experiment with various instrumental melodies and vocal samples, they could produce something considerably better. By sticking so rigidly to the techno template they create a series of tracks that have the foundations of a promising record but are ruined by self-indulgent pointless experimentation. Avoid unless you are a redneck soldier attempting to extract a quick confession from a prisoner during an Abu Ghraib torture session.