Miss Piggy Lunchbox

This is the next installment of Ipecac’s 2005 releases, and it slots in as easily their best release of the year. It’s a refreshing listen by virtue of more than just its high quality: this is the kind of album that we in the review business like to classify as a “fun-loving romp.” Consisting of an amalgamation of Russian and Eastern-bloc performers, Messer Chups lays out 45 minutes of their take on Western culture through the eyes of Cold War-era filters and instruments. Imagine the comical exuberance of White Zombie translated to spy music played on Soviet-era synthesizers and theremins, and you’ve got Crazy Price. Clips from American horror and science fiction b-movies dance alongside innovative sound-effect timbres turned into instruments that groove unexpectedly well.

What Messer Chups brings to the table in innovative use of sound and kicking grooves they lack in compositional talent. About half of these 16 tracks work themselves into structures that maintain your interest for three minutes, but when they miss it’s because they stay in the same monochromatic vibe for that amount of time.

The band is at their best when they stretch themselves (which is a better proposition than being better when they don’t), as they do on “A Plateful Brain,” which features a modern jazz piano riff of cluster chords, and “Gangster They Called Horizon-man,” which begins with harp. More of these tracks are shareable than the singleton mixer indicates, but the halting use of sampled movie dialogue (they clearly have a love for the rhythms of English) prevents most of them from flowing with anything.

Messer Chups isn’t just about sound, as they demonstrate with their use of other media. They include five videos on this CD which are perfect visual analogies of their songs, featuring patched-together and psychedelically-altered visuals from b-movies, along with what seem to be some creations of their own. Four of the five videos are of songs not on this album, which is nice because they’re not just throwaways. I really wish they’d included some audio-only versions of them, in particular “Super Megera.” Check it out for yourself:

They’ve also mastered text. Their Wikipedia page is rich, and well worth a read. I’m not sure there’s a single band whose Wikipedia page gives a sense of a band’s sound better than that of Messer Chups. Here are some verbatim clips:

Since 2005 Messer Chups is duo of Gitarkin and ZombieGirl on bass and in 2007 they became trio with drummer Denis “Kashey” Kuptzov from famous Leningrad band. In 2008 they changed drummer to Alexander belkov and became vocalist Alexander Skvortzov.

Messer Chups’ music often features a fundament of surf drums on which they build collages of samples from odd sources, like circus music, jazz, east European animation soundtracks, and American B-pictures. On top of that they lay solos from guitar and theremin. The overall effect is one of loving parody and good fun.

Good fun, indeed.

Rating:

Mixer: “Sex Euro And Evils Pop”
Non-keepers: “Chasing For Young Blood,” “In 3 Minutes Till Massacre, “”Ghost Rides To West,” “Make Music, But Not Trash,” “Monkey Safari,” “Not Made In Japan,” “Good Night”
Filed Between: Mercy Me (…And The Devil Makes Three) and Metal Church (The Human Factor)

Tags: 2005, 3.5 lunchboxes, CD reviews, Ipecac, music

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