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.
3/5 |
