Mozart Estate - Pop-Up! Ker-Ching! and the Possibilities of Modern Shopping (2023)

Ever since Denim ground to an unceremonious halt in that Paris underpass, whenever that was, I've been waiting for Go-Kart Mozart to deliver on the promise of Back in Denim. I know Go-Kart Mozart were a different group - sort of - and one for which disappointment might even be considered a central theme, but then I'm nothing if not an optimist*. Anyway, I've been listening to Mozart Estate for about a month now, and I think he's nailed it this time.

Surprisingly, and despite the glaring similarities, the Estate does indeed seem to be a slightly different animal to its pram-wheeled forerunner, occupying a reasonably comfortable midway between the airbrushed studio stomp of Denim and the bargain bucket novelty of the intermediary incarnation. I'm fairly certain the drums, for example, are programmed, but you have to listen closely to tell and the Bontempi organ has seemingly been relegated to the cupboard under the stairs. It's mostly business as usual, I suppose - songs which sound like seventies television commercials, chirpy sub-Beatles jingles, the potential influence of Mike Batt, and everything with a synthetic fibre sheen of the artificial so squeaky clean that it's initially quite hard to listen to; but the themes are even darker than usual, with the grinding squalor and despair thrown into contrast as sharp as a Stanley knife at the cup final by unrelenting jollity, and yet with nothing I can identify as either cynicism or irony. There's the typically unsavoury view of the homeless alongside a cheery homage to Poundland, Vanilla Gorilla which seems to stand in praise of white van man, the thoroughly unsettling I Wanna Murder You, and pretty much every track delivers a distinct whiff of the unsavoury with its broad showbiz grin.

I'm about to do something crazy.
You'd better give the cops a call.
The things I need to express,
Are all against the law.

Nothing specifically invokes Savile but this record nevertheless feels somehow like Consumer Electronics with tunes, and not just tunes but a full stage show with glittery dancers filling the slot between Doctor Who and Brucie's Generation Game. Pop-Up! Ker-Ching! and the Possibilities of Modern Shopping is potentially the most horrible record you've ever heard and probably qualifies Lawrence as an actual genius.

 *: This is patently untrue.

Bone Crusher - Free (2007)

 

Free? Free from what? Free from the previous and highly unsatisfactory record contract? Free to record exactly what you want to record? Free from expectations of your releasing an album which isn't complete shite?

Older boys and girls may recall Bone Crusher as part of that new south thing a couple of decades back, and AttenCHUN!, his quietly terrifying debut, meant the new south actually was briefly a thing rather than just David Banner then yet another batch of disposable club twats photocopying Three-6-Mafia out-takes, probably with Jermaine Dupri jumping up and down in the background trying to get your attention, as usual. AttenCHUN! was fight music of the best kind, an angry fat guy losing his shit over pinging drum machines with the sort of growling intensity by which Fiend, Mystikal and Pastor Troy made their reputations. So, ignoring the peculiar fact of the cover resembling a 1986 issue of Smash Hits and the promise of Free featuring Valley High - whatever the hell that is - I snatched this from the shelves without too much umming or ahing.

Unfortunately, sometimes you can judge a book by the cover, and Free sounds about as good as it looks. Some bloke on the internet suggested that it resembles a Gwen Stefani record, which is fair. One thing which it doesn't sound like is AttenCHUN! Bone Crusher doesn't even rap here. Mostly he sings, and while his voice is just about good enough to negate the need for autotune, the customary autotuned vocal sounds conspicuously absent from the plinky-plonky compu-pop over which he sings. Frequent references are made to rock music, apparently proposing that rock music is what we have here, but it's no more a convincing argument than the chorus of Fat Boy Rock Star.

I'm a fat boy rock star.
All I do is play my guitar.

Brilliant, although he doesn't actually play his guitar at all on this album, and what guitar is to be heard on Fat Boy Rock Star - the song specifically quantifying just how much Bone Crusher loves to play his guitar - is patently sampled with no attempt made to disguise the fact. Free sounds like children's music, and maybe our big-boned pal made the album for his kids; which is fine but it would have been nice to have had a bit more warning, at least something beyond just terrible artwork - misleadingly offset by the mention of Rhythm D as producer on the back cover, presumably a different Rhythm D to the psychopath at the desk of MC Ren's thoroughly ruthless Shock of the Hour, unless maybe he fell and hit his head or something.

Free isn't the worst thing I've ever heard, and as synthpop, it probably doesn't suck significantly harder than solo albums recorded by members of Depeche Mode, but coming from the guy who gave us AttenCHUN!, it's a shocker and is therefore going straight back to the store.