Weird music for weird monster-machine people – such is this CD, aimed at capturing the Tokyo monster rock/Godzilla-King Kong era with tracks from today’s modern artists. This compilation is packed with cool samplings, in fact, with everything from bratty, East Bay punk-esque offerings, “I wanna Be Japanese” by Kick in the Pants to Jungle-techno “Go Bot Go” by Stratos.
This is the modern day version to the 1968 Planet X compilation, Monster A Go-Go: The Psychelic Sounds of Japan. In fact, I presume that was the exact inspiration behind this comp.
More than just an album, however, Kaijuice comes with a full CD/DVD (Go Hero) of bonus material: animation, videos, etc. Cool stuff—or, at least, that which actually functions is… Some of the material requires specific players, which are common enough that you probably have them; or at least can install them quite easily (for free) via the Web. Other material requires contacting particular Websites, which didn’t all work for me. It’s worth acknowledging, though, that the particular day I tried to view them, there was a massive power outage in Los Angeles; the Web had some slowness because of it. I would guess this is the reason for my difficulties.
This is a very cool, very diverse concept disc which showcases a variety of genres and musical groups from Tokyo (of course), as well as London, Los Angeles New York and beyond. For Zombie Sci-Fi and the rocker with a taste Kaijuice is definitely a keeper.
