Joakim
Milky Ways
!K7 Records
When you just can’t decide what style of music you want to listen to this evening, why not try all the styles at once? Joakim might be the solution. He takes more styles than I can count and mixes them together – it’s a combination of composing, arranging, sampling, and remixing. The opening cut, “Back to Wilderness,” might put you off a bit, it’s industrial metal-banging, forklift-racing factory noise. Skip over it to get to the more musical part of the album, or put it on repeat and drive the neighbors nuts.
Once through the blacksmithing portion of the disc, Joakim supplies a much more intriguing listen. “Glossy Papers” features a slow, downtempo beat with electronically modulated vocals and a jazzy sax punctuating the guitar lines. “Medusa” nearly sounds 1982 MTV New Wave with its urgent drums and vocals and simple synth lines. “Spider” opens with a tom-tom beat that might have been ripped off a 1965 Hamm’s Beer ad, but tapers down to a spacey electronic dance number that demands a smoke machine. I can go on, but the point is this – while Joakim Bouaziz draws from the entire iTunes catalog, he creates something new and exciting. Kids these days, why, they’re not really going to hell in a hand truck. There IS a future for music!
Joakim: www.myspace.com/jimbazzouka
