"Cratedigging" is one of those words that works fine in print, but Jesus Christ, if I ever hear anyone say it aloud in public I will punch him in the face. Call it what you want, but the digging of the crates (gah!) is London trio Chicken Lips' M.O. for their entry into !K7's laureated DJ Kicks series. Here are 21 vastly different cuts of little popular renown, culled largely from the 80s traditions of Hi-NRG disco and friendly-tempo dub. Along with these are a few tracks of recent vintage, including a Matthew Herbert remix and three written by Chicken Lips themselves, one of which has the best bassline ever.
These three newer tracks throw the mix somewhat into flux. Not to say that it's a necessity of mixtapes or a requirement of the DJ Kicks series, but in general there's some sort of discernible common thread to a DJ-set style collection of tracks. If it isn't entirely because the tracks are of same time period, and, if it certainly isn't entirely because of similar genre, I would hazard that Chicken Lips picked these particular songs because in each, one element or another is, to put it crudely, not quite right. For many of the tracks, this peculiarity can be as simple as some incongruous synthline that works despite all odds; in the case of Nina Hagen's "African Reggae", for instance, it's as extreme as a German woman yodeling. This thread of transcendent weirdness allows Chicken Lips to seamlessly string together what would otherwise be deeply jarring sequences-- the mix consequently has both an esoteric feel that warrants much praise, and also an amateur and personal aura that ingratiates itself.
Picking the best tracks out of oddball mixtape albums seems more of a personal task than a critical one, but if I may, in order as they appear: Matthew Herbert gives Norwegian vocalist Karin Krog's sultry "Meaning of Love" a glitchy treatment up to par with the best of his similar work on Secondhand Sounds, kindly minimizing the fete of its Brazilian-style flute-looped shuffle without desecrating it. Herbert's track is followed immediately by the timbales, key-tar, and low-coded chorus of Jimmy Spicer's classic hip-hop relic "The Bubble Bunch", which, if it does not win over the listener with its somewhat kitschy funk guitar riff, will do so by the force of nostalgia alone. Nina Hagen's "African Reggae", mentioned above for its German yodels, also sports an anthemic arena guitar solo that takes up the chorus melody of "I... wanna go to Af-ri-ca"-- you'll hate it or you'll love it, but either way "African Reggae" is the track most indicative of the quirky Chicken Lips mix spirit, and perhaps the most memorable here.
Beyond the meticulous amount of thought that informed their track selection, Chicken Lips also contribute the absolutely sick groove of "Wind Ya Neck In", a 5\xBD minute big beat track that, in a way, is the album's only true dance number, and betrays the group's pre-history as 90s house duo Bizarre Inc. Redeeming the five-song rut of relative bores that begins after Larry Levan's upped reworking of Gwen Guthrie's "Seventh Heaven", Chicken Lips keep the individual parts of "Wind Ya Neck In" relatively simple, but certainly not minimal. The track builds on the spastic stop/start sixteenth notes of a hi-hat and a fat three-note bassline, peppered with occasional percussive slashes and hazy humble synth tucked far away in the background. It is fittingly the longest track on DJ Kicks, followed immediately in sequence and length by Big Two Hundred's "Suckee", which has a similarly deep bass and big beat feel.
Going from that terribly mediocre selection of songs in the middle of the album into the vibrant Chicken Lips number, one can't help but worry that the trio might develop something of a Michael Mayer complex-- always compiling others' work but rarely releasing their own. The other two Chicken Lips' tracks on DJ Kicks are fresh, perhaps more perfected takes on the Hi-NRG style, with their synths more finely timbre'd and an overall depth of sound much more realized than their vintage predecessors. "You're Not Ready Yet" pits a bassline against itself, whose unlikely jitter fights with its sloddy lowtones: background hands are clapped in what sounds like a basketball arena five miles away. "Bad Skin" closes the mix, approximating a radio cut-up style a la Akufen as tandem male/female love croons are interspersed among a shattered erotic sampling of I-can-go-all-nights and Baby-I've-got-it-bads. With any hope, Chicken Lips will suspend the cratedigging (they also did a mix last summer called Body Music for the Nite Life label), take Mayer's cue, and plan to release an album of original work in the near future-- the sooner the better.
