The Implosion Quintet

The Implosion Quintet is five times oversold; it’s one guy, the Norway-resident James Baker, who started hip hop hybrid experiments on a crude program on a Playstation in 2001. Now his album is like 30 channels of radio playing simultaneously, mashing up gypsy jazz, Middle Eastern folk, Tropicalia, prog, space-blues and stoner rock, with intriguing samples scattererd around and an intentionally rough-edged feel. Sometimes it’s dizzying, sometimes it’s dull; you could say Beirut meets Animal Collective meets Dead Meadow but it doesn’t sit still long enough to attach such a tag. I kept tuning in and out of the songs but returned to just a couple: ‘Bone Sideways’ mixes opera and rock riffs before turning into some sort of James Bond spy soundtrack and the accordion-led folk-mash ‘We Fight The Swan’ is a magnificent travelogue in sound and time. It’s a conceptual piece and maybe one to dip in and out of – his Myspace page is a good place to start - but who wouldn’t love an artist who thanks his listeners for “making this all seem a little less like masturbation”. This is one to enjoy with friends.

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