Fantastic Plastic Machine: Beautiful

BY LARKIN GRIMM

There were so many options, so much hollow plastic music to fill your ears. If you were feeling particularly obnoxious, as I usually was, you could speed it up, slow it down, and mix it up with some thumping on the keyboard. With the help of my fantastic plastic machine, I was instantaneously a musician.

Tomoyuki Tanaka, the frenetic DJ behind the Japanese pop band appropriately named Fantastic Plastic Machine, is part of a movement called Shibuya-kei that makes grooving club music that is the cutest of the kawai. Fantastic Plastic Machine's third album, Beautiful, can be best described as a custom Casio compilation. Tanaka has searched through a plethora of influences, from bossanova, Latin, and lounge, to r&b and even disco. There's a little bit of Stereolab, a lot of Pizzicato Five, and an undercurrent of something darker, like Lou Reed's Berlin. Each sound is attached to its own little rubber button on Tanaka's keyboard, emitting noises that are plastic copies of the originals. The heavy-handed production of the album ensures that every sound fits seamlessly into the next, but on top of all this, arhythmic rhythms, artificial hand claps, and uncomfortable melodies "boodly-boodly-tik-ta-beedlebee" themselves into a repetitive oblivion.

Beautiful is a great album for anyone with a kitsch-driven sense of humor. The inane vocals that bop over the cheesy electronic beats will bring everlasting joy to such listeners with lyrics like, "She took her pencil/and drew a moustache/on the face of/the lovely Mona Lisa." This record's pairing of the nasal whine of an overconfident chanteuse with the deep voice a skilled Barry White impersonator will give you chills. Beautiful is a fun, danceable album, but if it's innovation and creativity that you're looking for, I have an extra pair of earplugs. You're gonna need them. (Emperor Norton)

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