Mochipet & BloodySnowman: Unicorn Glowsticks Rave Party
Creaked Records

Starting Teeth: I Continue in the Nude
Creaked Records

Unicorn Glowsticks Rave Party: the title of this split EP by tag-teamers Mochipet (David Wang) and BloodySnowman (Shawn Porter) provides a pretty good description of its contents all by itself. Wang's “Electro888” opens the 12-inch with a feverish slab of squiggly techno whose gobbling bass and hyperactive melodies ooze rather acidic flavour, after which Mochipet's remix of BloodySnowman's “Neon Wizard Championship” stomps hellaciously. Side B reprises Porter's original, all pounding hornet swarm and cuisinart splatter, and pairs it with the pick of the litter, BloodySnowman's spindly electro-techno makeover of “Electro888.” The duo's full-throttle shredders may be wacky but they're far from unpolished.

Canadian Nathan Jonson and France-based Childe Grangier indulge in more tomfoolery on the EP follow-up to their recent Starting Teeth full-length I Won't Do Anything I Can Do. I Continue in the Nude isn't all new material: in fact, given that four of its six songs already appear on the album—the clubby “xxDONE”, sputtering banger “Ankles,” whistling whirligig “Empty,” and vocoder-shredded techno of “Tongue Journey”—, one questions the rationale for releasing an EP whose ratio of recycled to new material is 2:1 (culling the album's most danceable cuts for 12-inch consumption hardly seems reason enough). Which leaves us with a new tune and an “Our Old Teen” remix by dubstepper Scuba (owner of the Hotflush imprint). The familiar “amen” break gets royally mashed and twisted for the spastic funk of “Twisted Floors” but the twitchy tune remains solidly grounded by a tight, handclapping groove and a willowy synth melody that escaped from a Boards of Canada session. The EP's strongest moment, however, comes at the end when Scuba's remix pairs a mantra-like “Every second / A perfect second” refrain with a percolating fizz of electro-swing density.

June 2008