MUNK - The Bird And The Beat

Three years after the acclaimed "Cloudbuster", the charming dj-producer Mathias Modica, aka Munk, is back on the continental circuit. Co-founder of the Gomma label, split between Marseille and Munich, with a Sicilian mother and a German father, the dashing Mathias is a skilled manipulator of vintage effects and plays pretty much everything himself. His motto is to spread retroactive, shamelessly strobe-lit disco-music. Picture yourself back in the late Eighties, standing in your swimsuit next to a jukebox in Fregene pumping out cheesy heat, your eyes fixed on the trashiest album cover, ice cream dripping through your fingers, and you'll have more or less the idea.

On this third effort, Modica makes clear from the very first pulses a genuine obsession with the hardest, stockiest strain of italo-disco. In short, synthesizers manipulated with brio and tinkered with nonchalantly between one aperitivo and the next. All of it building a genuine style on which to juggle his own rhythm sections. A house-leaning attitude to taming every single facet, and the job is done. It's no coincidence that "The Bird And The Beat" was played entirely live, confirming an instinctive approach where the imperative is to have fun and entertain. Hilarious too is the Italian dropped into several tracks, as in "La Musica", the first single pulled from the album with modest success, "Kitchen Call" and the erotic "Mis Labios". The irreverent Mathias never likes to take himself too seriously, flooding eardrums with drunken beats and transfigurations bordering on kitsch. What we have here is an album conceived for the summer season, one that can play the part of mellow pre-evening chill-out to enjoy with a smile on lips still damp with vodka, cheeky remarks and rowdy touches warming up the mood.

The only shame is that the game eventually grows tiresome, given the lack of truly strong tracks and, at times, an excessive dose of revival-flavored goofing around. It's also a shame that "Keep My Secret" evokes, without ever quite biting, the famous "Starlight", a beloved hit by Super Men Lovers. Still, the twelve young ladies lured to the mic by Mr. Gomma manage to ramp up the required seductive charge. What's missing in several spots is that elegance which characterized the understated "Cloudbuster", that ironic, killer groove. To close, the nu-disco hypnosis of "Dort" serves only to warn us that the party's over. Time for a dip in the water, nothing short of regenerating, and plenty of sunscreen.

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18/04/2011