Blogarhythms

Hopefully everybody in the reading audience enjoyed their day off yesterday. Assuming of course you had the day off. For some reason the term “labor” as used in “Labor Day” always makes me think of delivering babies more-so than the manual labor it actually refers to. I’ve never witnessed the delivery of a baby myself. Nor do I have any babies of my own. So I really don’t know why I’d make such an association.

That said, my lady-friend’s godmother recently make the prediction that were she and I to procreate our offspring was destined to be more precocious, outspoken, willful and radically rebellious than we or the world at large are likely prepared for. According to she we might expect something between a Stewie Griffin-esque talking baby with delusions of world domination and a genuine Earth-conquering, world-devouring despotic super-villain.

As extreme as that might sound I can’t say I’m surprised that someone close to us, knowing our idiosyncracies as they do, would prognosticate progeny so rambunctious as to warrant the appellation “terrible child” for a multitude of reasons for us. Apparently faceless UK-based sound collage artist Sonny J knows the score when it comes to bad-ass kids as well, since he called the opening track to his debut album Disastro — a cut-n-paste of big drums, Rock guitar chops, horns, video game bomb-drops and petulant vocal samples — “Enfant Terrible.”

Then again, he might just be a child at heart. After all, the diverse range of source material he taps throughout the duration of Disastro sort of gives him the air of that proverbial kid in the candy store. If the candy store sold candy made of records that is. Oh, and some of the candy is made from bits of melted down television & film samples as well. Sick with a bellyache called Disastro from devouring all those treats Sonny J plops right down in a spot next to The Avalanches and Lemon Jelly in that space which exists between the likes of DJ Shadow & RJD2 on one end and Fat Boy Slim & Moby on the other. Or he could just be playing like he’s The Go! Team if they were a Girl Talk side-project instead of an actual band.

Body-rockers like “Handsfree (If You Hold My Hand),” a wholesale jack of a country-fried orchestral Blues/Jazz side, and “Can’t Stop Moving,” a pastiche of numerous vocal samples over a gloriously stirring string loop and skipping drums, and the horn-driven title track sound most like a Gregg Gillis-helmed mash-up of Dead Ringer, You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby and Thunder, Lightening, Strike. While other tunes that follow a similar blueprint, like the funkified “Belly Bongo” and “Doing the Tango,” with it’s melodramatic horn stabs, jangly guitars and chopped vocal samples, come off a bit campier.

Sonny J “Handsfree (If You Hold My Hand)”

 Sonny J “Can’t Stop Moving”

The remaining selections on the album tend more towards the downtempo end of the instrumental beats spectrum. Of these the moody “Cabaret Short Circuit,” a concoction of woodwind, harp and hand-drums decked out with a heartbroken extended vocal sample, and “Sonnrise,” which seamlessly entwines sunny ‘60 Folk-Pop psychedelia, gritty Country & Western, synthesizers and 808 kicks, stand out the most to my belabored ears.

Music to my ears in fact! And good thing too, since that’s exactly what these ears need to drown out the sound of all the terrible kids returning to the Middle School across the street after Summer vacation on this post-holiday morning.