Tomoke Abe's study of a certain Reykjavik pixie's nosediving vocal mannerisms has been so thorough that she now actually outbjörks Björk. Her faultless emulation even covers up any whiff of her Japanese accent. From the coy grrrowl on pivotal words to the scat-inflected poise which precedes each kittenish pounce, she has every nuance down cold. Thankfully, English/Japanese Maya Moeran, the master of Sha'Cho Mouse's sounds and samples, has plenty of tricks up his sleeve which haven't yet been exhausted by Björk's crack squad of hired producers. "Dead on 4" scampers up a ladder, thousands of miles above the clouds and surrenders itself fearlessly to the whims of the wind, catching updrafts and eddying air currents like a falling leaf. Again and again, Abe and Moeran barely touch ground only to be whisked back into a staging of endless airborne somersaults. With slapped basslines, ghost horns and strings and tumbling beats, Moeran keeps "Tiny Girl" so off-kilter and off-the-one that you have no idea where to look to follow Abe's breathy peregrinations. Traditional eastern musics, R&B and progressive rock mingle in the heady "Just Too Late," a head-spinner which glitters like Siouxsie Sioux but dances like Kate Bush. When you think you might have deciphered Moeran's maze of production antics, the script is flipped abruptly with a graceful slip into a lather of Yoshinori Sunahara-like electro/exotica, decorous piano and bansuri flute textures or a slide into a deep-blue Bristol funk such as "Toy Box." Abe does a really fine Beth Gibbons on "Toy Box," another been there/heard that rescued by Moeran's amazing trickery and some super-tasty fretboard dazzle from Rasmus Burger Rasmusson. "Ice Scream (Skip It Mix)" gets back to Björk - a Björk handed off from Dillinja to Baby Mammoth and finally to Susumu Yokota. More remix wizardry is found in the crisp "Ice. B (Original Mix)." Though the album mix consists of little more than trickles of piano and a drizzling of strings, the bonus mix brushes against the R&B peaks of Aaliyah or Missy Misdemeanor Elliott at their remixed best. You'll be trying to figure out how Sha'Cho Mouse pulled that one off for a long, long time.
gil gershman
sonomu.net