Amazon.com
You might love it or hate it, but you won’t be indifferent to Space Ponch. This quartet of Japanese knob-twisters composes instrumentals that wear their banality as proudly as any mall rat modeling his or her latest piece of Tommy wear. The group favor factory-preset synthesizer voices and self-consciously wacky sound effects that create an ambience as remorselessly cheery as a clown’s painted-on smile. You-Ichi Kishino’s Vocoder steeps the relentlessly bouncy music in cheese-whiz disco nostalgia. Space Ponch’s melodies have deeper, if no less plastic, roots in Raymond Scott’s cartoon soundtracks; to make sure that you don’t miss it, there is one named “Raymint Scott.” This album could be an awe-inspiring peak of consumer culture craft – play it in any store and both the staff and the customers will move a bit quicker. Or it could be a cruel, fluorescently lit vision of hell. – Bill Meyer
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