Bisk: Moonstruck Parade

Five years and three records later, Bisk still offers the same signature quirkiness and attention to detail. Moonstruck Parade makes substantially more use of the human voice (sampling, among others, a delicious female voice that's *very* Ella Fitzgerald). Strategically placed around bleeps, beats, and various sampled instruments, the human voice remains yet another thread in Bisk's tangled and evolving web of sound. Other textures making their presence felt on the new record: saxophones, steel drums, guitars, and scratches.

Moonstruck Parade generally follows a loosely swinging rhythm, constructed by the strategic arrangement of synth tones, drum machine noises, and lots of "clean" samples. When one element of the counterpoint wanders off, another sound creeps in to take its place. Or, just when you least expect it, Bisk breaks everything down and moves in another direction. At times actual linear melodies sneak into the mix, like the occasional child-like piano tinkering. But these melodies fade away as soon as they're found out.

The playful nature of this disc provides extra insulation against the twin evils of pretense and rigidity, which often ruin experimental electronica. But at the same time, Bisk's apparent sense of "just goofing around with the toys" betrays a frail self-consciousness... which is just what we like in our experimental music.

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