Prior to this, honestly the only Denki Groove I had heard was the post-quits remix compilation "The Last Supper," scattered mp3s, and 石野卓球のPost-Denki Groove debut album KARAOKE JACK. I loved The Last Supper, hooked by the sample-driven madness of Cornelius' remix of Gari-Gari-Kun and the LFO-controlled filters on the nonsensical rhythm synth loop present throughout the song on the last supper and that notice I took has kept me ever curious as to the sound of album 電グル.
Denki Groove embodied a ださかっこいい (cool by virtue of its contrived lack of cool) aesthetic in highly produced, dense electronic dance music that was liable to change at any moment from a bizarre sports commentary skit by two fictional moron announcers whose enthusiasm is clearly out of proportion to what they are calling plays on to a seriously deadly bassline banger. Very DJ-based dance, arpeggiated, rhythm sequencer-driven, Denki Groove was a pair of producers amazingly in their element among knobs in need of twiddling, irreverent self-referentiality, and abhorrence of even a moment's silence. In attestation to the international vanguard nature of this band, the songs, vocoded or dry, are sung in Japanese, English, and German.
Highlights: Eine Kleine Melodie (see POLYSICS' "Black Out Fall Out" on For Young Electric Pop for another Japanese treatment of this careening-through-an-echoing-joy-at-the-speed-of-light sound), the fucking rhythmically bizarre Edisonden (Edison Electric) (utilizing war-era Japanese TV and Commercial Jingle samples, informational tapes, vocoder, shouting rap-like choruses that preceded Li'l John by about 10 years and still win out in technique and complexity, and straight electronics and drum loops), and Themes from the Invaders, which starts with a fake commentary and dives into a clean and slow bass drum groove narrated by an alien who alternately introduces himself as an alien to the people of the world, invents a new word for hello combining "Hello" and "konnichiha", introducing himself as the invader who invented that word, and invents a new food that he invites the people of the world to try (it has a cream flavor and it only costs 400 yen). Needless to say, the people of the world cheer. I love this band. Technical masters who are completely at home out of their minds.
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