LIVE HUMAN
Elefish Jellyphant (Matador)
Reviewed by Holly Day

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Live Human is an awesome cross-pollination of sampled noises and live music resulting in something that falls somewhere between free jazz and trip hop. They're far from being the first band to combine elements as diverse as dialogue snips and scratching with upright bass (K Records ICU is another band that does wonderful things with the combination), but originality isn't the issue here. The percussionist, Albert Mathias, is more than adept at the variety of traditional drums played here, including North Indian percussive instruments and hand drums, making for some unique backbeat tracks that keep this far from the usual trip hop collective of repetitive drum machine samples, while double bass player Andrew Kushin and DJ Quest (Carlos Aguilar) fill in the spaces with enough beautiful and interesting sounds to confuse, perplex, and delight even the most creative of club kids.

© 2001 - Holly Day