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Artist - Tal M. Klein
Title - Plastic Starfish LP
Label - Aniligital Music
Released - 28.04.08
Posted 30.04.08
A cut and paste mash up of funky breaks, beats, basslines, disco licks and sample topped with authentic sounding instrumentation. This great LP will appeal to all from the hip hop heads to the classic funk and soul lovers. With afro and disco creeping in at the edges this is as funky as James Brown ever was and features wicked music for both the bar and the dancefloor.
From the uptempo grooves of tracks 2, 4 and 6, to the more mellow head nod grooves of tracks 7 and 10, via the mid tempo funk of tracks 1, 3, 5 and 8, to the 4/4 disco vibes of track 9, whilst not forgetting the uber chilled track 11, this LP has all bases covered. The fresh thing is it's predominantly instrumental, apart from the odd vocal sample, and Ode To Cap'n Gaye and which sounds like it samples an interview of Marvin Gaye himself.
With itch and Dig Deep written all over it, this will be lapped up by fans of Fatcity, DJ Format, Major Artform, Quantic, Natural Self, Monk One, Two Mellow, The Haggis Horns and Breakestra to name but a few.
Rating - 10/10
Reviewer - PT
Track List
01. Netpunes Minty Trident
02. To The Evening Red And Morning Grey
03. Houston Brownwater Moccasins
04. Sextant Machine
05. Brincando El Tiburon
06. Emmylou's Underwater Petting Zoo
07. Ode To Cap'n Gaye
08. Plastic Starfish
09. That Ain't No Mermaid
10. Lazy Land Lovers
11. When The Waves Turn The Minutes To Hours
12. The Sight Of Land Ne'er Sweeter
Press Release
Somewhere around 1996, a young Tal M. Klein met Dave Marino during a late night
talk show called “The Saturday Night Hangover” on his university radio station.
Idle banter turned to serious chat, and Dave made the brave move of letting Tal
into his recording studio in Belmont, New York. The rest, as they say, is
history.
Tal M. Klein has been releasing music on his San Francisco based Aniligital
Music label since 1997, using it as a platform to put out records under his
moniker at that time, Trancenden. After a handful of albums (“Nicotine Fits &
Analogue Beats” in 1998, “Peace Love Beats” in 2001, and “Alpha-Beats” in 2004),
he became fed up of people assuming he was a trance DJ and reassumed his birth
name. Away from his many side-projects ranging from country blues, 80’s synth
pop and composing music for television & film use (MTV, “Long Board TV” and even
porn!), Tal can often be spotted DJing in the same circles as Ursula 1000,
Fort
Knox Five, All Good Funk Alliance, Bonobo, Mr. Scruff and
James Murphy. In 2006
he even wrote and produced a tongue-in-cheek minimal pop EP under the moniker
The Hotness, which has been selling tracks like hotcakes on iTunes, just to see
what it would sound like if he made a pop album.
He considers crate digging to be an intrinsic and important part of his creative
and artistic process: “Finding that perfect record, to me, is like winning the
chocolate, money, and sex lottery”. His love of breaks started back in 1996 when
making DJ mixtapes for his friends. He started experimenting with records,
playing the “bonus beats” on a hip hop 12″ at 45 rpm. All of a sudden, these
tracks took on a new, faster, funkier persona. He would blend them using wave
editors to make “tracks” out of these super mixes and release those as 12″s. As
time progressed he learnt about multi-tracking, mixing, and harmonies, almost
the entire album you have before you was constructed from samples, with a few
exceptions where he laid down a few keys of his own.
Indeed, “Plastic Starfish” is very much a return to form for Mr Klein. While the
name is essentially arbitrary the content is far from it, sporting sampledelic
funk and disco right from the Aretha Franklin sampling offset through to the
Lemon Jelly-esque finale.
