Angel Eyedealism and The Horny Spawn - Aggressive Cheesecake
Angel Eye Records

By Mark Kirby (more articles from this author) 2000-12-19

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Artist: Angel Eyedealism and The Horny Spawn
Title: Aggressive Cheesecake
Label: Angel Eye Records (www.angeleyerecords.com)

Every once in a while, we music writers get a reminder of why we keep pursuing, looking, listening, and writing about music. It's because, like a patch of shade in Arizona, you come across a record like "Aggressive Cheesecake" by Angel Eyedealism and The Horny Spawn. You know they're out there, those records that, when you hear them, sound slightly familiar, yet strangely different. So different that it might seem too weird at first, and you say, "What the fuck is this?" Then, after a few songs and a few listens, it dawns on you: "This record is good." One hates to toss around terms like "innovative"or "seminal," in part because there's nothing that is actually new anymore, just undiscovered or recombined, and because to do so sets up instant skepticism. A skepticism rightly born of being perpetually disappointed by this "great new record" that always turns out to be a crock pot full of warmed over, stale musical offerings. In the case of this record, to quote Walter Brennan, it's "No brag, jus' facts." As a trip hop/ electronica/ new sound record, "Aggressive Cheesecake" is innovative and seminal.

Angel is a singer, producer, actress and song writer. The band and the record are her brain children. The music is a bizarre and elegant mix of phat beats, jazz essence, and trip hop psychedelia. With her five octave vocal range, she combines a torch singer's low and throaty style, and the operatic swoops and shrieks of 80's German rock-diva Nina Hagen. Every vocal is emotionally nuanced, with peaks and valleys of sometimes delicate, sometimes raw, intensity; these elements are organic, and in service to the songs, not just the vocal gymnastics of a Whitney Houston. The Horny Spawn is just as unique in how they play their instruments and the songs. Bassist Dale lays down fluid lines, at once jazzy and funky, and off-the-meat rack drummer Kay Edwards plays phat beats that bop, groove and swing with subtle slinkiness (he uses brushes, a rarity for a 21st century) as he draws heavily from sixties funk and soul. This solid, rolling sound cushion lets Nick Demopoulos float Bill Frissell / Grant Green-like jazz stylings through an array of electronic manipulators to create beautifully demented textures. Craig Flanigan adds a melange of noises and samples, both subtle and weird, including phantom piano sounds and son of new wave synthesizer licks.

The CD opens with "Angel Eye," the band theme song, and a bold opening statement. She uses the full extent of her voice - from low register talk/singing of the verse, to the stratospheric, operatic shouts of the chorus; from whispers to shrieks - singing lines such as "Angel Eye if you let her fly she'll save the rest of us!" and "She's the angel, she's the succubus, she lifts you up, she lifts you up!" The haunting, multiple voices and odd sounds, the relentless drive of the rhythm, and the portentous lyrics, let the listener know that they're in for something intense.

After this ear and eye opener, the record swoops down to "Mr. Cake," a joyous existential love song that puts love and sex in its proper place - at the center of life. The music alternates between a drone-based, sparse, mutated back beat on the verse, and full bodied, phat funk on the chorus: "If I call you Mr. Cake, can I eat you whole and spit you out? Why? Why ask why?" For more girl power, there's the jazzy "Hung", and "Horse,"(which should be covered by every basement trip hop band, like garage bands play "I Wanna Be your Dog"), and "Mac Daddy", (up tempo trip hop, on the funky tip), which asks the musical question, "Am I just an angry girl/ or does a man's way of thinking make your head just swirl?" The most aggressive of these type of songs is the CD title song "Aggressive Cheesecake." This lyrical freestyle floats over a smooth dub bass line and break beat drums and starts out, "I'm gonna fuck you up, Jewel!"

Other songs deal with the full spectrum of the female experience: raw sex and love ("Budapest"), visions of desire ("Deadpan Harlequin" and "Edgar Allen"), and frustration ("Pretty Fucked-up Boy").

The best moment of the CD is the trippy, jazz ballad "Lost and Found." Angel's voice is low and strong, like a ballsy Julie London, as it tells of love lost and found in a way both humorous and heartbreakingly sincere. Trumpeter Flip Barnes adds the tastiest cool jazz trumpet accompaniment, answering and cajoling the vocals. Like Miles Davis blowin' from beyond the grave.

Angel and the Horny Spawn have given us a fresh, fun, and unique sound. Call it jazzy, psychedelic trip hop, the musical yin to Good Speed You Emperor's yang. Tricky and Massive Attack without the R 'n' B, the monotony and the blunts. This record shows, as trip hop outside of Portishead stagnates, that creativity can suck nutrients from any soil. You just have to rotate your crops, and add some fertilizer from some other place.

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