RockIt Records & Recording Catalog

Xpensive Dogs/Xpensive Dogs//Wat Tyler (Split CD)

Format: CD
Label: HARD DISC International (Japan)
Genre: Rock, Alternative, Euro, Tech, Punk
Description:
Price: $14.00
(tracks 1 through 7 from this CD are available for download on iTunes)

Tracks:

Xpensive Dogs
1. Freedom
2. Dream
3. Money For Love
4. Sing Low, Down
5. One Too Many
6. She Says
7. A Dog’s End

Wat Tyler
8. Justify Your Book
9. It Makes Me Belch
10. Billy Bonds Claret And Blue Army
11. Not Superstitious
12. Jazz With Jumps
13. Too Young, Too Bitter
14. Big Girls Blouse
15. Fat Wa
16. The Eternal Triangle (A Modern Opera)
17. No ID
18. The Slaughter Of The Little People
19. Violent Precinct
20. Mr. Punch
21. Chasing Shadows
22. The Little People Make Luvre

Musicians:

Xpensive Dogs
Gary Tanin
Toshi Hiraoka
Greg Koch (Greg Koch and the Tone Controls)

Wat Tyler
Smithy
Tuck Wat
Sean
Julie

Reviews:

This CD (from Mondello music - you remember the "Larry Mondello Band", reviewed here in these pages long ago?) is a KICK! Apparently composed (mainly) over the INTERNET (using CU-SeeMe, Video camera & e-mail), it's just amazing what they've been able to put together. Features Gary Tanin, Greg Koch & Japanese artist Toshi Hiraoka... mixing was just SUPERB, no slapdash "broken track" stuph to be found... sounds JUST as though it'd been performed live. Start of a trend? The new "tower of Babel"? Fortunately (for us), it's not the "tower of babble", some nice catchy toonz to be found on here, ROCK ya' on down thee road! Gets a MOST HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

Rotcod Zzaj
Improvijazzation Nation

Xpensive Dogs are a Japanese/US internet collaboration between Toshi Hiraoka, Gary Tanin and Greg Koch. Together they cook up a steaming gumbo of sound with the most exotic side-salad you ever heard. On none of the seven tracks here can I think of an immediate comparison, which is always nice. But I don't want to praise this band for being different as despite what many will tell you, different does not equate to innovative, nor to good. I mean, there's plenty of other wilfully obtuse bands around, but how many of them sound un-contrived and natural? The Dogs combine breakneck poly-rhythms, quirky guitar lines that spiral off all over the shop, wild squeaky synths, chunks of sound, gurgles, gloops, bleeps and blurps galore. Xpensive Dogs are both innovative and excellent.

In fact, this is unbelievably cohesive for a record of this type put together by (e)mail. Makes you wonder what might've happened had all the musicians involved been in the same place at the same time (and why Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder only managed a horribly naive and sickly ballad when given much the same freedom). It's a shame that there are only seven tracks, pick of the bunch for me is Money for Love , the most balls-out of them.

Wat Tyler do their usual punk-rock-comedy-good-time thing. And they are superb at it. The tracks here form a compilation of already-released material aimed at the Japanese market. If you're already a fan, you'll probably have it. If not, then it's worth getting this disc for the introduction: 15 songs plus hilarious liner notes.

Topper

Robots and Electronic Brains