PEPE DELUXE
Super Sound (Emperor Norton)
Reviewed by DJ Johnson


I remember being so excited by the possibilities presented by electronic artists like LaTour, Phuture, Finitribe and their ilk back in the earliest days of the 1990s. There was such an excitement to the mixture of live instruments and electronic sounds and, most of all, I was hyped to hear samples used in creative ways instead of being nothing more than a dumb place marker, as if the "artist" was saying "if I HAD an idea, it'd go riiiiight here..."

And somewhere around 1994 I stopped waiting for anyone to take it to the next level, because nobody was trying. The form of music I had been so excited by, which I'd never learned the trendy name for, seemed to be gone. Now I'm hearing it coming from a Finnish trio called Pepe Deluxe and I want to send them presents! That music of 11 years ago was like a wonderful mind-ride (you can call it a head trip, but mine had the little cars floating along and the "you must be this tall to take this ride" signs and all that, which wouldn't be as scary if I had been on SOME kind of drugs), but there hasn't been a car along in all that time, other than one sponsored by Tricky, and that had way too many people on it. Then, out of the blue, here comes Pepe, and the sound reached me long before the car did. Slight percussion on both sides of the stereo field flanking a single, modulating synthesizer that sometimes explodes into many sounds, but only briefly. Slip into the car and keep your hands inside. Float on.

Just as Finitribe sailed you round Aquatopia and other places still firmly planted in your mind (if you were lucky enough to make that trip), Pepe Deluxe moves you through their world, giving you a close up view of even the shadowy places, and sometimes riding along with you as they tell the tale of the moment. It's all so intoxicating, wonderfully so, just as that music of 1990 promised to be. Hope at last.

One quick note: In this age of splitting time between sampling and playing, I'm not sure where the slide guitar playing in "Everybody Pass Me By" came from, but whoever it was has my hat tipped their way, to say the least. Very nice.

I can't end a review of this CD on the words "very nice." It gives the wrong impression. So I'm just going to say "I figure I'll have my mind back in a few days." I'm not worried. I know it's having a good time.

© 2001 - DJ Johnson