Kore Ga Mayaku Da

Osaka experimental garage punk duo Afrirampo's Kore Ga Mayaku Da, released on John Zorn's Tzadik label only a couple of months after their full-length debut, Urusa in Japan, had come out in Japan, pushes the boundaries of the group's sound even further than their previous work. Opening with the 13-plus minute "I Did Are," Afrirampo hit you with their trademarked brand of heavy garage riffs and nonsensical vocal meanderings, but show that they won't be constrained by that, letting the instruments almost entirely drop out after about five minutes, leaving Oni and Pikachu engaging in some squeaky-voiced improvised call-and-response vocalizing, before giving way again to an almost Frank Zappa style doo wop deconstruction. It climaxes in a food fight between the song's various component parts and in many ways can be taken as a microcosm of the whole album. Kore Ga Mayaku Da is more experimental than the major label Urusa in Japan, but it is nonetheless consistent with their previous work in that it doesn't contain songs so much as episodes. Tracks that sometimes seem like songs at first listen, like the sweetly melodic "Want You," sound like a piece of '50s bubblegum but are really just using the '50s motif as a starting point for the group to make more of their own unique brand of raw self-expression.