wanna buy a craprak? reviews

 

Careless talk costs lives – march/april 2003

Why would carpark typo their title?  Howzabout if the grammar is a metaphor for the music on the label?  Is it possible that the simple distortion of Carpark mirrors the way the bands take familiar music, twist it and deliver it back so divinely fucked up?  Could the cut’n’shut techno of Kit Clayton vs Safety Scissors be a wry comment on the banality of bangin’ house?  When Dinky bleeps breathily through “No Love” is it my imagination that twists the track into a glorious clash of the bass from “Jack Your Body” and the spirit of Soft Cell?  Kid606 is well known for crushed collisions, so am I wrong to think his gentle ambient “If My Heart Ever Ran Away…” is showing off?

 

So many levels to this Craprak.  But is this crit chic, of am I up shit creek?

-          jimmy possession

 

Xlr8r- march/april 2003

Carpark is releasing some of the loveliest little sounds around these days, all fuchsia beats and electric lavender shadings.  This sampler slots thirteen tracks and four videos together as neatly as new, perfect crayons in a box.  Greg Davis’s “Brocade” is an aptly titled tangle of glowing guitar threads, and the simple guitar and piano of Ogurusu Norihide’s “ 5:00 ” roll gently, underscored by a soft clicking that resembles tiny kisses.  Casino Versus Japan and Kid606 offer up waves of slow-mo reverbed sweetness, and Takagi Masakatsu’s gem is all golden glint.  Peep also Hrvatski’s glorious, shimmering timeshift.  What a treat: quietly exuberant songs that pulsse with love.

-  selena hsu

 

Vice – February 2003

New York forward-thinking label Carpark kicks off 2003 with Wanna Buy a Craprak?, a solid compilation featuring thirteen tracks (and four videos) from a selection of audionauts flying the carpark flag (marumari, greg davis, kid606, dinky, ogurusu norihide, signer, etc).  While most of the tracks are of the laid-back, abstract folktronica nature, tracks by kit clayton vs safety scissors and freescha mix it up and get a little more rambunctious.  Specially priced to move, and if you haven’t already picked up a carpark release (like the absolutely necessary Casino vs. Japan album), this is a great chance to discover a great label.

- raf

 

Record collector – march 2003

The most beguiling tracks on this curiously-named compilation of past and forthcoming releases from the new york-based electronica label, carpark, tug directly at the heart-strings rather than the feet, with music that’s emotional, poignant and charming all at once.

 

San-Francisco-based duo freescha titled their recent album slower than church music – it was Moby’s favourite album of 2002 – and forge music that’s appropriately near-devotional.  So Takahashi finds beauty in a colour chart, producing a droning elegy in “blue blue electronic blue”.  On “brocade”, greg davis weaves guitars and microbeats to unabashedly beautiful effect.

 

Even Kid606 rejects his propensity to polemical “noise” in favour of neo-ambient electronic romanticism, with the cherishable “if my heart ever ran away it would be looking for the day when right besides you it could forever stay.”

 

Most adorable of all is a contribution from Casino Versus Japan, lifted from their Whole Numbers Play the Basics LP.  I’ve heard Global Communication’s 76:14 invoked in comparison to their album proper, and on “aquarium”, they create music that is, simply, lovely.  A record to cherish.

 

The onion – January 21-28th 2003
Wandering casually between icy abstraction and homey naturalism, New York 's Carpark label has carved out a rich electronic-music niche by favoring ambition and modesty in equal measure. Over the past three years, the imprint has unearthed quiet near-wonders from around the planet, currying critical nods with albums by Casino Versus Japan, Takagi Masakatsu, Greg Davis, Signer, and Ogurusu Norihide, among others. Soundwise, the label ranges from spacey ambient-house to glitchy meditations to acoustic plinking. But the most impressive aspect of the compilation Wanna Buy A Craprak? is the way the Carpark catalog congeals into something approaching a shared aesthetic. Greg Davis' "Brocade" lays out the collective style in increments, running gently phased acoustic guitar against sighing pops that grow to show the seams of a programming loop. Even as process lurches to the forefront in tracks by Kit Clayton Vs. Safety Scissors and Marumari, though, Craprak holds tightly to the quilts and blankets integral to computer music's enticing isolation. From the sine-wave ambience of So Takahashi's "Blue, Blue, Electronic Blue" to the shuffle-beat electro ooze of Dinky's "No Love," Craprak presents what's less a command to stare down the internal architecture of technology than an invitation to float in the atmosphere it suffuses. All the gee-whiz wonder leads to a few twee toss-offs, but Craprak's sequencing offers welcome escape hatches by mixing up tempos and textures. Casino Versus Japan's "Aquarium" charts an overripe space ride, but Kid 606 resets the course retroactively with a tight, pulsing squeeze. Most of the compilation proves more intuitive than inventive, but Craprak's cumulative swirl casts cosmic aims and intimate bedroom musings as part of the same program.

—Andy Battaglia

 

Cmj – January 17th , 2003

With a number of great releases to its credit, Todd Hyman’s Carpark Records has often found prime parking spaces within the CMJ RPM garage. In addition to a roster of new and exciting experimental electronica artists, Carpark stands out from the pack by including impressive multimedia value adds, such as exclusive videos, with most of its releases. Wanna Buy A Craprak is a compilation that features the best of the old and the new and, more importantly, includes exclusive tracks that you won’t find anywhere else. The lineup includes such diverse acts as Marumari, Greg Davis, Kit Clayton, Safety Scissors, Kid606 and Signer, a group of lesser known acts that texturally resembles a collage of more established artists such as Boards of Canada, Squarepusher and Aphex Twin. Tracks to get your motor running come from Ogursu Norihide (“ 5:00 ”), Dinky (“No Love”), Freescha (“Live and Learn Me”) and Casino Versus Japan (“Aquarium”). This is indeed an impressive collection for a label that might remind some of a pre-fame Warp records. Despite the title, there is no crap here.

— Justin Kleinfeld

 

Tandem news – January 17, 2003

Behind the daft title is great music to be discovered on this American electronica label's first compilation. For a bargain price introductions are made to their international line-up of switched-on artists with previews of forthcoming releases and four quicktime videos (including one from live video improvisers 242.pilots featuring Kurt Ralske formerly of Ultra Vivid Scene). I gave positive reviews for several Carpark releases in 2002 and worth revisiting is Casino Versus Japan who did the smart music for the ocean side ad for the new Hummer H2 suv. And now Carpark's schedule for the new year looks strong as well if the glistening flow of kosmische synths by So Takahashi ("Blue, Blue, Electronic Blue") is anything to go by.

- chris twomey

 

logo magazine – January 2003

New York ’s Car Park label was responsible for some of the most interesting releases of 2002: Kit Clayton vs Safety Scissors’ ‘Ping Pong EP’, the ambient multimedia excursions of 242Pilots, Signer’s minimalist electro-dub, the mathematical, Dali-esque constructions of Casino vs Japan.  All of these names will leave you scratching your head - unless you’re a regular reader of LOGO that is - but here’s a budget-priced sampler that collects all of the above, and more, together with a handful of videos.  Take a chance with this one because (I’m about to use a phrase that is deployed all too often by lazy hacks, but no other will do) this album will change your life.

-alan downes

 

timeout new york - jan 30-feb 6, 2003

brian eno, so much to answer for: semidetached rock intellectualism as practiced by the performer, not the critic; the record producer as reason to buy albums by ostensibly self-contained bands (as opposed to the phil spector hit-factory model); artists flaunting their art-school links instead of putting them to surreptitious use.  And, oh yeah,  ambient music.  Or maybe more to the point, protoambient music – namely 1976’s another green world, on which eno merged pop structure and chill-out imperatives, alternating between light stimulation and zone-out wooze, mapping the blueprint for countless albums to come.

 

Take wanna buy a craprak?, new york electronica-plus indie carpark’s new label sampler.  Despite its title, an homage to the classic rough trade records anthology wanna buy a bridge? that comes sour out of the mouth (try saying the word craprak out loud sometime), the disc has more in common with eno’s masterwork.  That means it passes the first test of any compilation, which is that is works as one thing.  Craprak is consistent, though that’s a criticism as well: its peaks and its valleys are so similar in quality that it can be as tough to love as it is easy to play.

 

Still, with a label like carpark, whose uneven output has always seemed in need of a curated tour, a compilation is just the thing, and this is one of the label’s most attractive packages ever.  So takahashi’s “blue, blue, electronic blue” is a drone that teems with life inside of its narrow margins even before the blip beat arrives four and a half minutes in, while ogurusu norihide’s acoustic-guitar/piano/mandolin instrumental “5:00” offers stately fireside ambience.  Casino versus japan’s “aquarium” and kid606’s “if my heart ever ran away” are swooning electro-pastorales, the former trip-hoppish, the latter a kind of strobe-glitch.  Is it ambient?  No, but it’ll zone you out something nice.  Eno would undoubtedly approve.

- michaelangelo matos

 

Uncut – march 2003  ***

Nice price experimental electronica sampler from the Carpark label.  Thirteen audio and four video tracks, featuring cuts from Kid606, Hrvatski, Ogurusu Norihide, and Kit Clayton – some of them exclusive to this disc.

 

Muzik – march 2003  ***

What’s it all about?  Spectral laptop electronica from NYC.

What’s on it?  Sonic deconstruction; whorls of electric sounds mingling with sampled and looped acoustic textures; the sound of the echoing emptiness at the heart of a black hole; other things that necessitate the use of semi-colons and florid language.

Any cop then?  It’s like watching someone walk towards you across a mirage lake on shifting desert sands.  Infinite variation within apparent repetition.  Deep .

-  ZX

 

montreal mirror – January 23, 2003

For the last few years, New York ’s Carpark label has been at the forefront of the IDM/folk-tronic movement, bringing us great releases from artists like Marumari, Casino vs. Japan and Kid606. Carpark has decided to kick off the new year with a solid compilation featuring 13 past and future tracks (plus four videos) from their roster of audionauts, including Marumari, Greg Davis, Kid606, Dinky, Ogurusu Norihide and Signer. While a few numbers, like the Kit Clayton vs. Safety Scissors and Freesch’s tracks, are upbeat and rambunctious, most of the tracks are a nice blend of the electro-organic folk-tronica that Carpark has championed since its start. Specially priced to move, if you haven’t already picked up any of Carpark’s past catalogue, this is a great chance to discover a great label. 8.5/10

-         Raf Katigbak

 

Octopus – January 28th 2003

Qu'est-ce donc que ce Craprak qu'on nous propose d'acheter là? Une rapide et plutôt complète visite guidée du label, semblerait-il : les douze morceaux et les quatre vidéos de ce patchwork multimédia et multicolore offrent un catalogue fort pertinent des choix et des goûts de Todd Hyman, le jeune boss de Carpark. Car durant ces quatre ans de production et de signatures de nouveaux artistes, Carpark est devenu plus que "le label de Marumari". Certes, l'imagerie psychédélico-naïve du duo star du label continue de régir l'esthétique pop gentille de quelques unes des récentes productions et les étapes de sa vie d'alimenter les newsletters, mais Hyman semble avoir déniché de nouveaux et talentueux artistes. Ainsi, outre Saka, morceau extrait de l'introuvable premier album de Marumari (www.marumari.com), cette Carparkerie contient de très bons moments. Les récentes productions du label - de la techno domestique nourrie à l'indie-pop de Signer (www.involve.co.nz) à Casino Versus Japan, les dignes cousins américains de Boards Of Canada, en passant par la collaboration de Kit Clayton et Safety Scissors et leur laptop-pop peau de banane - dépassaient déjà les prétentions électronica des débuts, mais les extraits des productions à venir élargissent considérablement le champ d'action musicale de Carpark.  

Brocade, de Greg Davis (http://autumnrecords.cjb.net/), et ses arpèges de guitare acoustique en boucle, laisse croire à l'heureuse rencontre de Nick Drake et Steve Reich, plus loin le No Love de Miss Dinky pose des vocaux sensuels sur des gimmicks électro-funk évoquant une version ralentie du From Disco To Disco de Whirlpool Productions. Equinox, morceau inédit de Hrvatski (www.reckankomplex.com) ravit les fans de Keith Whitman et de ses ballades acoustiques sur breakbeats tranquilles, tandis que Golden Town With Sunglasses (en écoute ci-contre) voit le musicien/vidéaste Takagi Masakatsu (http://homepage.mac.com/utono) opter pour un format électronica résolument pop. Mais c'est à Freescha (www.attacknine.com), duo américain que l'on doit la perle de cette compilation. En guère plus de deux minutes, Live And Learn Me (en écoute également) revisite l'électro old school en même temps que la hi-fi et la stéréo avant de céder la place à une ballade électronique passablement glamour digne des Italiens de Jollymusic.

Quand vous serez repu de ce festin craprakesque, vous pourrez toujours regarder les vidéos de Takagi Masakatsu, Marumari, Jake Mandell et 242 Pilots. Alors, "Wanna Buy A Craprak?"

-         Christophe Taupin

 

Boomkat.com - Wonderful label showcase compilation from New York 's always nice Car Park records. With tracks from Kid 606, Hrvatski, Marumari, Greg Davis, Casino Versus Japan, Safety Scissors Vs Kit Clayton and Signer + more. Exclusive offerings start with those Californian sunshine click kids Freescha, So Takahashi's next up with warm metallic dronescape variations and then we have Takagi Masakatsu's wistful toytown drums and breezy melodics. Taken from forthcoming Car Park releases are Greg Davis's genius 'Brocade', an eloquent cycle of reflective acoustic guitar tones interspersed with analogue distortion and a nod to Steve Reich and Ogurusu Norihide's beautiful psych folk electronics a la Nagisa Ni Te. The exclusive Hrvatski track really makes this comp a winner, 'Equinox' showcases even more of Keith Fullerton Whitman's talents - a gentle ambient guitar loop sequence wooden block beating beats slowly unravels into bright blue post rock with the sweetest distortion imaginable. Superb. Plus they've added four exclusive Quicktime videos from Marumari, Takagi Masakatsu, Jake Mandell and 242 Pilots. One seriously good and eclectic compilation at a very nice price.

 

Portland mercury – 12.24.02

This discount sampler of the electronic artists on Carpark Records is worth buying for the design. Thank Heads Inc. (a design company run by ambience maestro So Takahashi) for that part. You can thank Greg Davis for Craprak's swimmy, light-fractured glitch; Kit Clayton vs. Safety Scissors for its nervous techy clicks; Dinky for the glam electro trax; Takagi Masakatsu for the emotional, light-of-day robot love songs, and Hrvatski for just always kicking the asses of beats. For fun, innovative electronic music, Carpark releases some of the best; Wanna Buy a Craprak is a good introduction, boasting beats solid enough for minimal dance parties and melodies pretty enough for silky cornfields in summer.

- JULIANNE SHEPHERD

 

Chicago maroon – February 4th, 2003

Compilation albums can be paradise or poison. Many comps that are organized and compiled according to genre conventions end up merely as documents of a particular style rather than pleasurable albums in their own right. On the other hand, record label comps often vie for an eclecticism that reflects the variety of the artists in their roster at the expense of cohesion. For instance, I remember that when I picked up Matador's tenth anniversary three-disc extravaganza Everything is Nice, I was rabidly enthusiastic to find so many songs by so many greats (Boards of Canada, Cat Power, and Yo La Tengo, to name just a few) in one cheap package. But once I got around to listening to all three discs, I found them eclectic in the worst sense--a hodgepodge. So the point is that you can't simply slap some great songs together and expect them to "work" as an album; there must be some overall unity.


Carpark is inherently less prone to this "hodgepodge" phenomenon because most of the artists in their roster can be loosely called "electronic," but that didn't make me any less skeptical when preparing for my first listen. After all, as a record label comp the potential stood that Wanna Buy a Craprak? could be merely self-serving, an opportunity for Carpark to show off all the talents in their roster at the cost of compiling a good album.


Thankfully, however, Craprak (I feel silly just typing that!) dodges that bullet by opting for cohesion over jarring heterogeneity.


Greg Davis's "Brocade" opens the album with lovely strains of multitracked acoustic guitar interweaving, overlapping, fusing and fissuring. In the background sundry electronic clicks and static whirrs and rattles eventually condense into a slow, stuttering beat that leads nicely into the fractured pop of Kit Clayton and Safety Scissors' "17-11." Here, surprisingly, vocals spring up, albeit in a reconstituted, regressed form. Clayton and Safety Scissors make you want to dance but constantly defer and deny the beat, until the song spirals into a miniature sound cyclone.


Following that is a track by Marumari, my favorite of all the Carpark artists. Perhaps because it comes from their first CD, it's not as focused or catchy as their material on The Wolves' Hollow or Supermogadan, but it's an interesting and rare view of geniuses in the making. Just as Boards of Canada have a distinct "sound" which they produce with their analog synths, Marumari has a distinct synth-sound, and it's evident here in larval form.


The fourth track is So Takahashi's "Blue, Blue, Electronic Blue," a gorgeous ambient song that accomplishes what only the best ambient songs do: evoke an imagined space in a way that transports the listener. Its shimmers of blue (truly the only appropriate word) noise and humming bass reference the "wall of sound" aesthetic of My Bloody Valentine but transmute it into a realm of pure, immaterial color.


By comparison, the following track, Ogurusu Norihide's functionally titled " 5:00 " is less ambitious, opting for a more conventional song structure with guitar and piano, but is no less lovely for it. It is a simple and pastoral song that would go well alongside, say, Richard Youngs's folk or Manishevitz.


Dinky's "No Love" is pretty cheesy, incorporating Game Boy noises with early-'90s sound effects and silly vocals, but it's light and entertaining in the sense that campy electroclash is (Adult, Ladytron, etc.).


Freescha's contribution to the disc, "Live and Learn Me," follows in a similarly dance-y vein but is infinitely better. I had the best-possible music journalist response--where can I get some more of this?


Casino vs. Japan slow things down with a dreamy but unremarkable track and, astonishingly, Kid606 follows with a pretty song with romantic overtones. Now, my exposure to Kid606 isn't deep or comprehensive, but I know him as a prolific "sonic terrorist" notorious for flaunting copyright law with breakbeat remixes; therefore this divergence from the majority of his output was surprising and intriguing.


Likewise, Takagi Masakatsu ventures into sonic territory I didn't know him for--pretty pop. While the exclusive track he gives Craprak is a bit repetitious, it opens up the horizon for him to combine his work in field recordings and electronic abstraction with this (new?) development. Who knows what could happen?


Craprak ends on a high note with Jake Mandell's "Beartrap!" a dark, suspenseful track in which some ominous force seems to wait at the sonic horizon. I can't help but impose a narrative on the song--considering its motion from a steady, pulsing beat (reminiscent of Plastikman's Consumed) to silence and shards of static, I couldn't help but think of The Blair Witch Project and other horror movies in which the listener/viewer is left with nothing but a static screen--nothing to fear but nothingness itself.


As an added bonus, the CD comes with four videos on it, of uniform quality. Marumari's "Way in the Middle" is a cute animated video of a baby's dream that comes off like an anti-smoking ad. Unfortunately, the dynamic video is set to a repetitive song that is a poor accompaniment to a baby and a rabbit racing in go-karts.
Perhaps the ultimate selling point for buying a Craprak, as it turns out, are the three other videos, the quality of which I could not possibly overstate.


Jake Mandell's video for "The Prince and the Palm," an upbeat, danceable track, takes what sounds like a boring premise and makes it compelling. Using only abstract red forms against a white background, Mandell makes them throb and transform in rhythm with the music, and the result is a lively video that makes more of less.


On a deeper level of abstraction, art collective 242 Pilots provide a video collage filled with images of skyscrapers, scaffolding, and sundry amoebic forms overlaid and intercut to create a dizzying paranoiac state, a visceral fear and wonder of the modern metropolis. It's difficult to contain my awe at that fact that this was all improvised onstage. I'm not sure what portion of the credit the artists deserve, and what portion their software, but the distinction is arbitrary anyhow--the artists programmed their own software.


I don't know if Takagi Masakatsu does the same, but his video work on Craprak, "I'm Computer, I'm Singing a Song," is equal to 242 Pilots'. It is a love poem in prismatic pixilation, cascades of sine curves, eruptions of color and paroxysms of light. An image of a woman talking decomposes into a chromatic essence, and finally disappears. It is perhaps the highpoint of the entire disc.


Although there are a few lackluster tracks, this Carpark compilation shines on many levels: as a showcase for all the talents they've assembled in their short life, as a good album with a unified mood (most calm and soothing), and as a small collection of luminous videos. Bravo, Carpark!

- yoshi salaverry

 

ink19.com – February 2003

Wanna Buy a Craprak? is a testament to the talented roster Carpark Records has assembled. This compilation indicates why Carpark may be one of the best-kept secrets in intelligent electronic music. Although the sounds and techniques vary between artists, the defining trait all seem to share is a sense of wonder and playfulness that is infused in these tracks. The songs compiled here run a gamut of styles but none are overtly abrasive (barring Jake Mandell's closer," Beartrap!"). Instead, the artists reflect a measured approach that emphasizes texture and technique above sonic gimmickry. Some of the tracks meld organic elements alongside electronic bits. The opening track by Greg Davis, "Brocade" illustrates this with a gentle passage played on an acoustic guitar that is subtly manipulated and augmented with whirs and clicks and tiny beats. The acoustic theme is picked up again by Ogurusu Norihide's stellar track " 5:00 ." Norihide accompanies the guitar's melody with a piano and a studied manipulation of the track. Also, fans of hrvatski will not be disappointed with his "Equinox." A piece that builds from an acoustic guitar and endless permutations until it concludes with a full on electronic freak out.

 

Of course, not all of the tracks are ambient headpieces. Dinky understands what it takes to get the bodies moving on her track, "No Love," an intelligent and inspired piece of electronic dance music from her forthcoming album, Black Cabaret that certainly whets ones appetite. Freescha marries a Peter Hook-inspired bass line to swashes of synths and a nice dance beat on "Live and Learn Me. " Takagi Masakatsu's "Golden Town With Sunglasses" will also have your foot tapping. The layers of synths and background vocals evoke a passing moment watching skyscrapers bend to the breezes. Signer's "Interior Dub" builds slowly with its languid beats and sinister texture, and serves as a perfect piece to stalk someone down a dark passage.

 

Wanna Buy a Craprak? is an inexpensive introduction to some fine electronic artists. These thirteen tracks, many of which are exclusives, serve as a fine introduction to one of the best labels around. Also, check out the four Quicktime videos accompanying this release. Marumari's video "Way in the Middle of the Air" alone is worth the price of the release.

- Terry Eagan

 

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