Anyone who still thinks that sample-based music lacks originality should replace the Hootie and the Blowfish record in their CD player with Cibo Matto's stunning debut, Viva! La Woman. Comprising two expatriated Japanese women living in New York's East Village, Cibo Matto don't just borrow sounds, they consume them. Yuka Honda mixes samples of atmospheric exotica, distorted guitars and dissonant horns, and funky backbeats are digested and regurgitated, creating idiosyncratic lounge music for a cocktail party in dystopia. Every song on this wackily obsessive study in aural bulimia is, appropriately enough, about food, described in Miho Hatori's crazed Onoesque broken-English vocals,
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which range from a sultry whisper to an earsplitting scream.
While their tongues are planted in their cheeks as often as they are wrapped around some culinary treat, Cibo Matto – their name means "food madness" and was inspired by an Italian movie called Sesso Matto (Sex Madness) – temper their joyously conspicuous consumption with the haunting realization that pleasure can be bad for you. "Birthday Cake," a cacophonous shriekfest that recalls the Beastie Boys at their most demented, is as disturbing as it is hilarious with its fate-be-damned chorus of "Extra sugar, extra salt, extra oil, MSG/Shut up and eat!" "White Pepper Ice Cream" is a simultaneously sensual and eerie paean to a dessert you may be too frightened to order.
Even their version of "Candy Man," from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, with its disembodied vocals and spooky, mechanized beat, will remind the listener not of Sammy Davis Jr.'s sunny version but of Gene Wilder's sinister leer and indifference to the unhappy fates of the children in that movie. And while "Artichoke" echoes Led Zeppelin's "Lemon Song" ("Can you secrete a lemon on me?" Cibo Matto plead at one point), it's skewed from the point of view of a woman living in harrowing times. "My heart is like an artichoke," they say as an ominous guitar wails in the background. "Your hands are like a rusty knife/Are you gonna keep on peeling me?" Like fugu, the Japanese delicacy that can kill if it's not prepared correctly, Viva! La Woman is as scary as it is delicious. (RS 727)
AL WEISEL
Ten songs about food (Cibo Matto is Italian for "food madness") by two Japanese women, this 1996 smorgasbord of aural delights sounds as fresh as ever - all hip n' trip-hop beats and breaks, with tribal rhythms and smooth muted brass thrown in for good measure. Catchy, irresistible and ripening well with age, serve with heaps of Massive Attack and a nice glass of Zero 7.
