Pocket – “Sampo” (Music Review)
By Bill Purdy • Jun 10th, 2009 • Category: Categories, Electronic, Music Genres, ReviewsPocket
“Sampo” (second in a series of download singles, with remixes and b-side)
Fraga
Rating: 2 out of 5
…wherein Asobi Seksu vocalist, Yuki Chikudate, gets the retro-electro-disco treatment, courtesy of Burnside Project frontman and remixer extraordinaire, Pocket. The ingredients are promising: Chikudate has one of the most distinctively lovely voices in shoegaze, and Pocket (producer Richard Jankovich) has developed a reputation as an innovative remixer of artists such as Beck, Radiohead, and Of Montreal. The execution here lacks punch, however. “Sampo” sounds less like the classic Italo-disco it’s paying homage to than the sleepy single-of-the-month that it is. While pleasant enough to listen to (thanks largely to Chikudate’s beautiful voice), it’s just not a strong tune. It sounds like something Jankovich wrote for a college music composition class and dusted off for this project.
The Mux Mool remix of “Sampo” can’t compensate for the original’s basic weaknesses. Layering the vocals over a thumping IDM backbeat, then adding a light New Order keyboard flourish, it flops around directionlessly for four and half minutes before slowly fading out. The Blue Eyes remix of “Sampo” introduces a deep, wormy bass and an angular guitar riff that gives the track a welcome sinister edge (and that could be sampled from a !!! record), but the echo-laden vocal track never really connects as well as it should. The Craig Wedren remix is the most experimental of the bunch. It (wisely) focuses almost entirely on Chikudate’s vocals, looping and layering them atop a cloudlike (and barely noticeable) synthesizer foundation. It’s the least catchy version of “Sampo” in this collection, but by stripping it down to its most basic components, it manages to distract the listener from the original song’s compositional flaws.
A better bet: the “b-side” to “Sampo,” “Swept,” featuring vocals by Lorraine Lellis of Mahogany. “Swept” settles quickly and confidently into an uptempo groove that sounds a bit like St. Etienne as remixed by New Order. It’s seeped in the same retro synth-pop nostalgia currently being mined by acts like Cut Copy and Junior Boys, and it manages to satisfy in the same guilty-pleasure sort of way. Noticeably, “Swept” is a much better pop song than “Sampo.” One can’t help but wonder how this project would’ve turned out had Chikudate recorded it instead.
Bill Purdy is not a musician. He hasn't a musical bone in his body. That pretty much disqualifies him as a musician (you don't want to be in the room on the rare occasion when he tries to make music), but it apparently doesn't impair his ability to consume music — especially new music — at a ravenous pace. He also likes to tell anyone within earshot what he thinks of music, fancies himself a critic of some sort. We, of course, know better.
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