With Sunahara gone the group filled the void with DJ Tasaka and Kagami, who it seems were pretty much given free reign to run wild all over the group’s material. Sadly, there’s not much of a record of what DG’s live show was really like through the 90’s – I don’t know if this is representative or not, though I’d guess it’s not. Suffice to say what you get is really not much like the studio albums it’s the same elements, but they’re arranged differently, with bass lines mixed up, lots of cross-sampling, and about five times as much yelling. Since DG fool around in so many genres this is quite impressive if you’re just looking at the tracklisting it may be difficult to figure how this all works out. Most of the tracks flow into each other, creating some pretty interesting segues – “Nothing’s Gonna Change” into “Killer Pomato”, or “TKO Tekno Queen” into “Niji” into “Volcanic Drumbeats”. There are 17 tracks in just under an hour, which means most of the tunes get cut down. The mix is all over the place – the crowd is very audible in the early going, but towards the end you can barely hear them.
There are some obvious in-studio after-effects and in some cases the vocal tracks seem like they might be pulled from a different performance. Ilbon2000 is compiled from seven different shows and it’s pretty apparent from early on that there is some trickery going on here. Even though the band was as successful as ever I think they knew it would be their last album for a while. As a result the remaining members threw caution to the wind and made VOXXX their most aggressive, diverse, and perplexing album yet. VOXXX, released in the beginning of the year, was total chaos, recorded and mixed across five different studios in Germany and Japan, with the group dealing with the departure of longtime member Yoshinori Sunahara in the middle of the sessions. The spent most of the 90’s careening from one electronic genre to the next – they did acid house, they did trance, they did hardcore, they did big beat, sometimes all on the same album. Total overload and we’re only on the first track.ĭenki Groove were in an odd spot in 2000. Monkey Magic Orchestra, hey! HEY! hey! HEY! hey! HEY!”. Samples from other tunes get thrown into the mix. This massive house beat comes in and they start cutting and scratching it right away. Things go over-the-top after only a minute. This infectious Daft Punk-ish bass line drops, as the crowd starts to yell along. The crowd goes wild from the very start, rave whistles and all. Any King Crimson live album that kicks off with “Larks 2”.
“The Man-Machine” on Kraftwerk’s Minimum-Maximum with those deep bass sounds that weren’t possible in ’78. Or Ween’s Live in Chicago, when the band immediately launches into a double-speed “Take Me Away” which blows the studio version out of the water. Presumably you already know all the songs, so all the critical questions get answered right away: Is the band going to stick to the record, or will they mix things up? What’s the sound quality like? How amped is the crowd? What’s the energy level? I’m thinking of Underworld’s Everything, Everything as soon as that brand-new synth line on “Juanita” kicks in you know you’re in for something great. Often you know if a live album’s going to be a banger in the first minute.
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