Connected: Bo En’s Pale Machine Featuring Avec Avec And mus.hiba
Ho hum, another Maltine Records from an artist not based in Japan, another opportunity for me to come up with some weak excuse to write about it anyway. But wait! English artist Bo En’s Pale Machine features collaborations with two of Japan’s finest producers going – Avec Avec and mus.hiba. Jackpot, no need for excuses!
The entire album is a cross-cultural whirlwind of sounds, as if one left the Nintendo Wii main screen on while watching a random assortment of YouTube videos – many in non-English languages – really loudly. Bo En’s music rarely sit stills for very long, as nearly every available space on Pale Machine gets splashed with some stuttering electronic sound or vocal sample (save for the elegant “Intro,” which simply serenades before everything gets dizzy). Bo En himself switches between English and Japanese for his vocals, while also switching between heavily-manipulated vocals (which themselves boomerang from robot-ish to cartoony…on just “Miss You” alone) to singing untouched (like on closer “My Time,” a track inspired by Kyary Pamyu Pamyu’s “Oyasumi,” except if it were more like a drunken sing-a-long diving into electronic freak out). It makes for a whizzbang album, an even more all-over-the-place Max Tundra-like affair. It might end up a love-it-or-hate-it-affair, but I’m on the heart-filled side and I hope you’ll join me.
Oh yeah, about those collabs…first up is Bo En and Avec Avec’s easygoing “Be Okay,” which features both diversions into bossa nova and a sample from Luther Vandross’ “A House Is Not A Home” which you might recognize as coming from Twista and Kanye West’s “Slow Jamz.” And then “Winter Valentine” with mus.hiba which…I’ve already written about! Still fantastic here. Get the album here (or donate for it).
