Gusgus - Polydistortion
Polydistortion is the sound of an artistic community unified for a single precious moment in time.
Based in Reykjavik, Iceland, the component parts of Gusgus come from all walks of life including a song writing film director who is also a professional cartoon voice, a celebrated DJ, a Hi-NRG loving computer programmer, an actress who dances and sings and writes songs and an actor who sings and writes songs and used to be a drag queen!
From the opening Esquivelian lounge groove all the way through to the ambient space music of the final cut there is a unique identity that somehow prevails throughout, even though there are a few occasions when a definite style or influence becomes apparent. Fling Mi Ting for example is strongly reminiscent of Groove Collective. Now I deliver uses the timpani/analog bass combination which helped define the Sugarcubes "sound", and the vocals on Why? sound vaguely similar to Edie Brickell, yet the songs makes sense in context. There is no one particular style that dominates throughout. Straight after Why? comes a synth heavy ballad Remembrance which is my favorite. Full of deep inflections and dark nightclub vibe, I found myself wanting more of the same then found myself getting the point of Polydistortion, it's not about sounding the same throughout, the whole album actually becomes a compilation of itself, "The best of polydistortion".
Disk two contains four remixes, one of which is called Polydistortion which is ultimately a re-mix of Polyyesterdays on disk one.
I certainly appreciated the album a lot more once I realized how many people came together to produce it. It's also important to realize that Gusgus is a collective and certainly need to preserve the variety of expression that is ably demonstrated on this album.
Rating - 801,400 (out of a possible 1,000,000)
