This is the third Tomita posting on this website, so I think it’s safe to say that I’m a big fan of his work. His primitive analog exudes a very primal aura. It’s as if he’s torturing circuits to get the sound he wants. Not run of the mill circuits, mind you, that harvest AC and DC in the fields for a living. No, he’s kidnapped gifted mezzo-soprano diodes from belly of a Sansui G-33000 Monster Receiver to whip and waterboard into fulfilling his deviant intent.
Alistair Tibbins: Tomita's Circuit Slave Trader
But as much as I love Tomita’s music it could be said that his album artwork rivals the songs in artistic merit. Take a good long look at the album cover above. True beauty and honesty: man flesh peeling away to expose robot thoughts and emotion. I think this may be the first time that the anatomy of a Japanese was accurately diagrammed. Until 1979 the scientific community was under the assumption that Japanese people were composed of warm flesh from surface to core. Tomita must have felt it was his duty to bring the truth to light and shed the shame of centuries past. What a burden it must have been for Isao Tomita to expose his magnesium manbits, and in effect the wiry privates of all Japanese citizens, to the entire world and end cyborg discrimination.
Almost as much as a burden as trying to understand why someone would set Tomita’s “Star Wars Theme” to photographs of Tubby comic book covers.
So, take your mind off of the bulbous animations of Tubby with a collection of album covers help compose Greatest Hits (with a few others as well).
This post will, hopefully, sound an end to this site’s recent string of errors. What you see above you is a set of dead eyes saying bon voyage to CPU failure. They’re looking back at the hardships my laptop has endured while putting this site together: hours of pushing its processing power 2 da max during 24-bit/48khz vinyl recording sessions, the endless punishment hammered upon the backspace key while eliminating miles of grahamatical errors, and its shiny exterior tarnished by all matter of liquor, goo and protoplasms.
Lil’ Lindasue also brings us good will from the corner with a friendly country song and dance. She’s telling me, in dainty porcelain twang, that my Dell is on the brink of resurrection. No longer will I have to endure the continually sticking space bar on this hulking, second-string behemoth. This space bar that took my eyelashes during a keyboard-induced nervous breakdown.
And so, I’m bringing Moby’s “Porcelain” to Rebuilt Tranny’s Rat Rod Record Exchange to act as a sort of salve, administered through the ears to help cure the blisters on my fingers. The soothing piano and ethereal synth motions will guide myself, and you, dear reader, into a new era of musical bliss. You will experience new vinyl rips at higher sound quality than ever thought possible on compressed MP3 format. It’s going to be beautiful baby, just beautiful.
We just need to keep Moby’s creepy cranium out of our heads or we’ll be broken down twice as bad as before.
I have to admit that I was disappointed with Daft Punk’s last LP, Human After All. I know that Discovery was a really, really tough act to follow but I was still hopeful they’d fill my dreams with 4 more years of hentai fantasies. And maybe this sounds like a gripe that’s too little, way too late. So sue me, again, and this time you’ll end up owing me money. Don’t blame me, blame our broken judicial system.
Samples were the Shayne Graham of the last album. Now, let me stop everything right here. I don’t want you thinking that I’m against samples, because I’m not. If I may say so: au contraire, mon frère (Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter would probably say that because they’re French!)
I’m all about samples. Daft Punk just dropped the baton, leaving the funk for Justice to grab with a clear line to the Slush Puppie vendor. But I’m still bummed that Guy and Thomas just dropped Le Groove. It’s not that the samples were bad. They were actually pretty good picks. But they didn’t do anything with them. It’s like a chef allocating the perfect lamb chop from a butcher and then placing that big, bloody, uncooked slab of wooly bully on your plate and saying, “Dig In.” You gotta prep, sucka!
Just take a listen to the next to two songs here. If you have the time give Robot Rock a good, full listen. Experience its repetitive beats with little variation.
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Now take a listen to “Release the Beast” by Breakwater from 1980.
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Notice any….similarities?
It’s basically the same damn song, although Breakwater’s original is a better musical representation of a Mylar glove, filled with testosterone, stuffed inside of a black velvet glove, slapping a Detroit traffic cop.
LUCKILY Daft punk released 12″ remixes of the songs from this album. In my not-so-humble opinion I feel that one of these Robot Rock remixes, especially the Soulwax Remix, should have taken the original LP spot. Soulwax took the original sample and made it something truly unique instead of just adding “ROCK, ROBOT ROCK. ROCK, ROBOT ROCK” over and over. It’s something clever, something catchy, something you’d hope to meet in a metallic bikini on a spring morning along the Uruguayan coast. Just take a listen-see to the next vid and download the damn thing.