Galloping Horses In the Year 3000
Well, well, well…what have we here? First The 5, 6, 7, 8s and now this? Well that’s not technically correct. Polysics are from Japan, true, but they’ve been doing their stuff a lot longer! So far in Japan they’ve hit it big and had a total of six albums, two mini albums, one live album and four live DVDs. Finally, they’re reached our shores with ‘Polysics Or Die’ their “best of” album. Can the UK crowds accept this new form of electronic rock is the question on everyone’s mind listening to this CD?
‘Buggie Technica’ opens with a technological ‘wild west’ drumming (imagine the sound of a galloping horse in the year 3000) and an exotic blend of synthesised sounds and voices. It then picks up pace and you cannot tell what each sound is but they are soon implanted in your head. ‘Hot Stuff’ follows with its faster paced guitar riff and lead singer Hayashi singing at the same incomprehensible speed. All of this followed by ‘New Wave Jacket’ that sounds like part of it is being sung by a Pokémon! Despite its game show, poppy reverberation it is still very catchy and good fun to listen to.
‘Plus Chicker’ starts with another pounding techno beat and guitar crash. Listening to it is like turning the speed up on your player. You hardly have time to take in what you’re listening to before it finishes. The group’s initial release ‘Kaja Kaja Goo’ is next. Starting out with the sounds of a modem, it quickly dives into a great musical blast, before reverting back to the album’s original path of synthesised voices and random noises that the album has thus far followed. Yet without taking into account the bizarre screaming of “Kaja Kaja Goo” the chorus is musically very pleasing. [The screaming chorus is what makes this track! – Ed]
Whether or not the next track, ‘Black Out Fall Out’, is even by the same band is a question that is on my mind. It has a more melodic quality, the enhanced programmed add in sounds are practically non-existent and we are left with a more pop-rock tune than the previous techno thumpers. Later ‘Making Sense’ also joins this group by providing your more ‘average’ song minus most of the fancy dubbing, mixing etc. ‘My Sharona’ reintroduces the horse noise from the first track but instead the song turns down a more tribal sounding route. The guitar stands out briefly for the opening before it is once again drowned in a sea of remixed voices and racket.
‘Lookin’ Lookin’ Gaa’, the name could not prepare you for this song more. The music is minimal on this track at first as we can hear what I have assumed to be a group of small children singing the name with the bands lead singer once again making little sense with his words. ‘Commodoll’ starts with an impressive sounding bass riff so I was hoping for a song based more on this aspect. Yet this is not the Polysics’ style and we trawl through another digitally enhanced song. By this point in time we are barely half way through the album and the songs are beginning to wear a little thin. At first it seemed enjoyable but now the novelty has nearly worn off.
This is the point that the album seems to get fixed in to a pattern and carry on with the same trends. The instruments are well played and inventively mixed up and re-dispersed to make this a very individual sounding album in comparison to everything that is out there at the moment. However the variety in within the album is lost and you are left wondering if you may have heard these songs too many times before.