MAMI CHAN BAND-LIVE, CD, 2001, FRANCE/JAPAN/UK

The 7 person strong, multinational Mami Chan Band is (was?) one of Andrew Sharpley's projects after the demise of the brilliantly snarky and dadaist Stock, Hausen & Walkman and is a bit of a carry-over from his somewhat more well known post-S,H&W project AE (who've had releases on Mouse On Mars' Sonig imprint) as AE's Emiko Ota is also part of the extended line-up present here. This doesn't get me any closer to attempting to explain the sounds at hand though, which is a bit of a trick, as the suave yet warped schtick that they fabricate defies easy capsulization.I hear snatches of Tipsy-like detourned lounge kitsch, R.I.O.-ish angularities, oom-pah, faux-spooky Danny Elfman-ish thematic progressions, the Yoshida/Tsuyama's piss-takey joker end of their avant-prog proclivities as heard in Akaten and, obviously, the dead-on sampler fuckery that you'd expect Messr. Sharpley to bring to the proceedings. Top notch screwiness.

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