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Turntablists are a referential lot. Often quite funny, too, something
exemplified by the boys of Birdy Nam Nam. The group's name is taken from The
Party, the classic 1968 comedy courtesy of director Blake Edwards and Peter
Sellers (the same duo responsible for the original Pink Panther series of
fims, not the crap remake by Steve Martin). In the film, Sellers plays an
unimportant movie extra invited to an A-list Hollywood party. Hilarity
ensues - it's easily one of the funniest movies ever made.
The foursome of DJ Pone, Little Mike, DJ Need and Crazy B won the 2002 DMC
World Team Championship. It's an impressive feat, although interest in DJ
battles has been on the wane since its heights of the 1990s. Moreover, it's
always been a seeming challenge as to whether those same DJs could
emerge as actual artists. Birdy Nam Nam accomplish that capably not so much
by producing music from scratch - no pun intended - but by heaping so many
old slabs of vinyl together that the layers become something completely new.
In The Party, a jazz ensemble shows up at the Hollywood mansion to perform.
It's sort of fun imagining that Birdy Nam Nam shows up instead. Selections
from this 17-track CD are most definitely jazzy, particularly tunes like "Body, Mind, Spirit," which has a deep cinematic groove as do "Kind of
Laid Back" and, predictably, "Jazz It at Home." But the boys can lay it on
thick, too - "Escape" has a menacing sort of energy, a sick bass line that
evokes a Dust Brothers (composers of the excellent score for Fight Club,
amongst many other worthwhile production credits) sort of sound. Beat
juggling, scratching and a fat break also come to the fore on "Engineer
Fear."
Saying Birdy Nam Nam sound an awful lot like stuff fans of Coldcut and DJ
Shadow would appreciate is obvious. But at times, the diversity and feel
sort of sounds like Led Zeppelin's vast incorporation of folk, Middle
Eastern and funk under a rock tentpole. But Birdy Nam Nam is tasty stuff no
matter what you call it. If that doesn't convince you, the live DVD also
included as part of this two-disc set should. www.birdynamnam.com -- review by Yuri Wuensch
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