04'02

ATOM™ Replicant Rumba Rockers: A Rather Interesting Mix (NON008) Nonplace 2002 14 Tracks. 42mins19secs. Buy this CD on line now

In twelve years, Uwe Schmidt, better known as Atom™, has released well over fifty albums, either on solo, under numerous monikers, amongst which Atom Heart, Señor Coconut or Los Samplers, or through collaborations with Pete Namlook, Burnt Friedman, Tetsu Inoue and Bill Laswell to name but a few. Most of his recordings have come out through his own Rather Interesting label. Exploring almost every angle of electronic music, from straightforward (if such notion exists at all in his vocabulary) techno to Latin style electronica, Atom™’s legacy is as consequential as it is inevitably incoherent. Replicant Rumba Rockers was compiled and edited by Flanger co-conspirator and Nonplace label boss Burnt Friedman, himself a rather prolific musician. For this album, Friedman went through the Rather Interesting back catalogue to extirpate some of his favourite Atom™ Latin excursions. A rather heteroclite and humorous collection by all standards, Replicant Rumba Rockers is desperately disconcerting. From the obsessive South American influences of Señor Coconut’s El Ovni Mambo, Erik Satin’s Follow Me To San Jose and Los Samplers’s Descarga Mecano to the cleaner cuts of Dropshadow Disease’s Dingbats, Roger Tubesound Ensemble’s On The Edge Of Fidelity or the Latin jazz of Silver Sound’s Congo!, it is only one side of Atom™’s polymorph personality that Friedman unveils and collate. Despite the incontestable variety of this album, ranging from the hilarious (Florianopoly) and the suspicious (All Notes Off) to the clever (Dropshadow Disease) and the sublime (Congo!), this album leaves the listener with a lingering feeling of being left out of anything going on here. Replicant Rumba Rockers lacks of real consistency and proves to be too eccentric to really strike a chord. It is targeted more at existing fans of Atom™ than to newcomers. There is however enough tracks to keep the listener entertained for the duration of the record.

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TRACK LISTING 01 Señor Coconut El Ovni Mambo 08 Silver Sound Jazz 02 Erik Satin Follow Me To San Jose 09 Dropshadow Disease Dropshadow Disease 03 Los Samplers Descarga Mecano 10 Dropshadow Disease Dingbats 04 Midisport All Notes Off 11 Roger Tubesound Ensemble On The Edge Of Fidelity 05 Erik Satin Dreaming Of A Huge Reverb 12 Roger Tubesound Ensemble Miniature In F Minor 06 Midisport Midi A Gogo 13 Ondas Stereo Kiss 07 Midisport Florianopoly(phonie) 14 Silver Sound Congo! Feat. Lisa Carbon

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THE SURFER'S GUIDE TO ATOM™ ATOM™ Exhaustive site on ATOM™'. Offers extensive discography, numerous links to other discographies, the site also includes a biography and a link to the Rather Interesting site. NONPLACE The Nonoplace website is an art statment. Once you've found how to get in, the content of the site is unfortunately not as good as you would expect.