Cassetteboy
Dead Horse
Barry's Bootlegs
2005
B
ith the exception of Jadakiss and his hilariously spot-on parody of ill-informed shout-a-lot Indymedia types "Why?", no musical act has delivered 9/11 influenced roffles as hard as Cassetteboy. "Fly Me To New York," from their critically-fellated 2002 debut The Parker Tapes, sought giggles from the deaths of 2,986 people and got them. To clarify, this wasn't a "satire on the media response to the World Trade Centre attack," or a "skewing of the cult of mournography," or political mockery dealing with US military policy pre-and-post the assault, but rather a cut-up of various Frank Sinatra tracks that led to the Chairman of the Board proudly shouting "Let's fly, let's fly into buildings, let's turn to ashes," before an ad-hoc choir of The Beatles, Phil Collins, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers mockingly addend "Look, here comes another aeroplane." Tasteless, inhumane, and also so funny that if it didn't make a little pee come out, we can only assume you have no sense of humour. Or your brother died in the WTC attack. Whichever.
And that's what Cassetteboy do best. Forget anyone who'll try and throw around words like "Plunderphonics" or "post-modern," or try and paint them as anything other than two bored guys cutting up bits of TV dialogue to make celebrities swear.
Dead Horse is the "official" follow-up to The Parker Tapes (an ill-advised "mixtape" affair on Antidote surfaced in the interim, and only served to dilute their talents as far as possible until they became bedding music for, I dunno, RJD2 or someone), accompanied by a lot less press attention (you can't throw feces at the establishment if you're on the front cover of Q now, can you?), and with the acceptance in the title that they're still running on exactly the same patch of ground we found them on two years ago. But why move on, when rehashes of old ideas can give birth to "Joliver" (pre-saviour of Britain's stomachs Jamie Oliver declaring "I'm a tosser") or "Saltgrain," which runs a broadsword directly into Mike Skinner's stomach. There, Bono and Neil Tennant croon "I want to... poison... The Streets," whilst the official soundtracker to wankers being miserable everywhere lets us know "I have a one-inch dick, it's too little to make love with" and that "A Grand Don't Come For Free is a crock of shit."
It's an album of set pieces, crafted together like the best paced action movie: interludes of weirdly relaxing (or maybe relaxingly weird) musical soundscapes (if Cassetteboy had no soul they'd make a great living providing the aural wallpaper for cafe-bars) are broken up with Stephen Fry Oxbridge-prick tones adding a sophisticated veneer to a tale of Harry Potter's first blow-job, or a public announcement film revamped until the announcer professionally beseeches you to fart on your local council, "if you live in England or Wales."
Dido's banality reveals "I'm shit, and always will be," whilst Crazy Frog's ring-ding-dinging pasted over "Imagine" (with added drum n bass stylings!) is worth a thousand "Dr Beats." The course in how to chat up women that's solely based around a sample of the phrase "Hey baby, you've got nice tits." Richard fucks Judy up the ass ("It's come out"). And, in my personal favourite, the "Quite good Jeremy Clarkson bit," as the tight-jeaned doyen of Sunday night right-wingery declares allegiance to both Robert Mugabe and the Luftwaffe, before dying in a horrible car crash. Terry Wogan then turns up to mock his death.
If there's one fault, it'd be the cut-ups of Tony Blair and George Bush (look! they're saying that they're terrorists! It's like John Culshaw... on drugs!). They're not needed at all (even though the latter is partially saved by the guy singing "I'm praying for George Bush to die" at the end of it). But you can't argue. It's a worthy follow-up to The Parker Tapes, and as long as there are enough hate-worthy b-list celebrities saying words that sound a bit like the names of drugs or sexual acts, they'll have more than enough material to carry them through to more albums. Thank god for that.

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Reviewed by: Dom Passantino Reviewed on: 2005-12-02 Comments (0) |



