DESCRIPTION:
Artist: ELECPHONIC
Album: ELECPHONIC
Year: 2006

01 - Don't Try Fool Me
02 - Freakin On A Sneaka
03 - Going To Goa
04 - Had An Idea
05 - Maria Duval
06 - Data Broka
07 - Ambien
08 - SUV
09 - LFA Sonar


The ELECPHONIC debut is a whimsically Mercurial collection of nine tracks simmered and steeped in a stew of electronica.

Released on Daniel Gannaway's Truly Independent label, ELECPHONIC presents an incisive socio-political commentary in its lyrical content and continues the wryly opinionated tradition of the label's various previous releases, such as OP-ED.

Going to Goa, for example, reflects on the cultivated ignorance of India's many tie-dyed faux-hippy tourists. "I don't really want to know about Goa's long history that stretches back to BC third century, I just want to get high by the Arabian Sea... I'm going to grow my hair and get braids and beads; I'm going to do yoga under the ubiquitous coconut tree."

A standout track is the humorously titled Freakin on a Sneaka, deriding the bizarre, though unstoppably popular sneaker culture/industry.   "Pumping the price up with limited runs, vintages and retros and new combinations, they make crazy money while people slave in sweat shops off shoe addicts like me just hanging for the Quickstrike... 300 pair locked down in dry storage. Ain't even been worn, still got them in their boxes..."

In a later track, waxing philosophical on America's fascination with oversized 4x4s, ELECPHONIC prophetically states of the SUV: "I'll always be happy as long as I have my toys." It seems that feeding the West's need for distractions, indulgences and toys is a global preoccupation that we foolishly call 'growth and progress'...

Truly quirky, yet indulgently crafted, ELECPHONIC is at its heart an exercise in musical creationism in that it arrives fully-formed from the ether with not a hint of evolution or precedent. The album can be enjoyed on a variety of levels, for it is musically competent, engaging and varied, and also taps the rich vein of 'currency' offered by electronica.

It's the lyrical adeptness, though, that holds the ear. For while the compositions build, crescendo and fall with great personality, the words have a lingering resonance which gives each track a depth of character not entirely familiar to the electronic genre.