It’s probably around the time of the earnest chugging groove of ‘Sala’ – track 36 on Japanese lunatic Dokaka’s 88 track debut album Human Interface – that the first notion you may be losing touch with reality really begins to take hold.
It’s not necessarily its musicality, or its R&B groove (something it shares with the 1:19 ‘Verb’ four tracks on). It’s more in the way these tracks are surrounded by some of the most curious and schitzo attempts at music that you’ve ever heard. This is sheer lunacy, the kind of crazy obsessive outsider genius that is all too rare. The music is fine: a myriad of genres, quite experimental, carefully structured, short sharp and punchy, with most tracks clocking in at just over a minute.
There’s a cartoony feel to Dokaka’s blend of rock, pop, r&b, torch ballads and bad 80s memories. But that might be because he’s created this whole damn thing with his voice. He’s famous for his vocal only reinterpretations of Led Zeppelin, Slayer, and The Rolling Stones, though Bjork also enlisted his services for her own experiments with vocal music on her 2004 Medúlla album. Human Interface is his debut solo release and, whilst sharing a similar manic weirdness with Mike Patton’s Adult Themes for Voice (Tzadik), he also delves into highly musical areas that are nothing short of jaw dropping.
Perhaps this is the evolution of beatboxing – a one man barbers shop quartet attacked by a rubber lipped banshee. Once you normalise this kind of lunacy you’re in trouble. Has genius ever been this damn weird?
Bob Baker Fish
