DIGITAL LEATHER:
Mork Technology: CD
In the vast expanse of the Arizona desert, gila monsters bask in the blistering heat and lick their forked tongues along to electronic blips coming out of the shotgun shack of Digital Leather’s practice space. Okay, so Phoenix isn’t in the middle of nowhere like Yuma, but still I can romanticize it for your reading pleasure, can’t I? Digital Leather’s mixture of ‘80s Euro dance with minimalism and somewhat jagged pop sensibilities is a welcoming fresh breeze in an otherwise soggy, gross state of current ho-hum recordings being put out by meagerly talented drones who follow the formula of the MC5 plus the Hives plus obscure powerpop band reference plus Exploding Hearts equals SUCCESS! Yeah, right. I strongly caution that this recording does not follow any rules. The capricious dance beats, the ominous bass lines, the distorted and otherwise emotionally distant/empty vocals and the wall of cleverly mixed synth/keyboards (he plays a Korg) paint a landscape of deserts, UFOs, goosh, running from attackers, cocaine and sleep deprivation-induced hallucinations of women having sex in the other room, and a myriad of other paranoias that plague the teen-angsted within us all. This project features Ryan and Matt Wong, Jay Reatard, and some other luminaries from the underbelly of the garage rock world. Thumbs up, punker dude. –Guest Contributor (Fatal Seduction, email mwong55@earthlink.net)