This is one strange album – and I mean that in the best possible way. Monster Zoku Onsomb are an Australian electronic band. The album is on a Russian label (available via Melbourne’s Psy Harmonics), where the band has its largest following. The sound is from all over the place – electropop, ‘ardcore, drill’n'bass, but littered with crazy 60s surf music samples, snatches of dubstep, some industrial. Underlying everything, though, from the artwork featuring a frog in a cosmonaut suit, to the Frankenstein samples, is underpinned by a huge sense of fun.
The title track has more than a hint of Bjork’s ‘Earth Intruders’ in its lyrical concerns, but lays out the band’s worldview quite effectively. ‘Scathing Beauty’ is another of the vocal tracks (with nods to another artist – this time Regurgitator’s ‘Polyester Girl’) which swings a rubber chicken at late capitalist aesthetics. ‘Raggiddim’ is a personal favourite, featuring heavy, half time rhythm swagger and a thousand glitches and exotica snatches.
On my first few listens through to Earth Eaters, my impression was of some IDMers with an actual sense of humour that extended beyond cerebral irony. Once I looked up the band’s website, the dayglo cyber-raver outfits kind of crystalised everything into a slightly different area for me – a more obvious future-retro-trash aesthetic, which is not quite as intriguing. None-the-less, the music does remain constant and is a fun beast.
Adrian Elmer
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