Tuesday, June 10, 2008  12:09 am 

Men who Fell from Earth

DC Recordings follow up the 2006 evil squirrel-themed compilation of all sounds tectonic and spectral-cosmic with Death Before Distemper 2: Revenge of the Iron Ferret. Said compilation features standard DC Recs bands - The Emperor Machine recording porn music for alien species, Padded Cell soundtracking cloaked skeletons running slow motion after terrified maidens, Kelpe creating underwater jamborees from the remnants of pirate ships and The Oscillation invoking spirits from BBC library synth music - but then they throw a few more aliens into the tracklist. One such off-worlder is Astral Manhole Project.

Astral Manhole Project - Perfected Love

AMP begin with a rolling bassline that Jean Michel Jarre’s ‘Oxygene IV’ would lay perfectly with, all the while unaware of the army of Space Invaders slowly approaching with lasers on full blast, ready to decimate pixelated tanks to the beat and layers of fuzz and spacial feedback blast screaming alien faces in silhouette across the room of the arcade, while vast spaceships collide overhead.

Rapster Records, following on from the Prince covers album, are gathering luminaries from across the musical globe to form a Bowie covers album, ‘Life Beyond Mars - Bowie Covered’. Joakim & The Disco stretch out ‘New Career in a New Town’ into a darkly echoing horrorhouse dub track that at times sounds like ‘The Frog Chorus’ bootlegged with ‘Nightmare’ by Brain Bug. Susumu Yokota delivers Quaalude visions in a spinning karaoke vacuum on ‘Golden Years’, Matthew Dear turns ‘Sound & Vision’ into a cosmic glacial second coming and Leo Minor transforms ‘Ashes to Ashes’ into a j-pop Strokes.

The Emperor Machine - Repetition

The Emperor Machine whisks Bowie off to their Martian jungle where the creatures of the Trigan Empire have created a slinky disco (not disco) percussion ensemble that would prick up the ears of James Murphy with its shifting hi-hats and harpsichord wobbles…

…and Kelley Polar goes for maybe the most ridiculous of Bowie’s bulging back catalogue, ‘Magic Dance’ from Labyrinth. Remember Labyrinth, kids? It was one of those terrible but great films that formed a layer in the totem pole of your childhood, worshipped alongside such throwaway crap as Visionaries, Ewoks Adventures and the 3rd series of Transformers (the one where it all went downhill). We al have the DVD, so you should be able to sing along:

Kelley Polar - Magic Dance

Kelley balls up the original, spins it off of the corner of a looping synthesiser through a searing blue holographic ring of flame and out into an alternate universe where the kidnapping goblins are actually Wall-E-styled comedy robots, flinging the stolen baby round a zero-G spacepod with Bowie strutting around awkwardly doing the robot in a silver moon suit and Kim Wilde fright-wig.

labels >> Kelley Polar, bowie, dc recordings, the emperor machine