courtesy run rampant one-sided 12"
[2006, not not fun]

los angelean jean-paul garnier is a tough dude to pin down, and with courtesy run rampant, that task becomes even harder. i've heard four or so of loopool's albums and it seems to me that he puts together his best material when not not fun's putting it out. the first thing that i'd heard from him was the blood trance split tape with robedoor a few years back and i liked that a lot. then, recently, i'd checked out a bunch of his albums on (seattle's) sycophanticide and was kinda left scratching my head. at first, i didn't even think that it was the same guy (there is another loopool, in turkey, who makes ambient techno), but after some research, i was assured that all of it was the efforts of the same person. those albums contained either piano-based or chilly minimal electronic experiments. his stop the revolution disc is depths of outerspace frosty, but worth the time if you're down with that kind of music.the first track, outright rejection, is loopool exercising his billy joel demons with a good, albeit fairly brief, piano piece. then, without any kind of segue, we're catapulted into the tumultuous nowadays. over distortion and much welcomed noise we're privy to jean-paul's anguished ranting. no idea what he's so pissed about, probably the government. oh wait, here's the lyrics, lemme see...nope, not about the government this time. this is the noisiest that i've heard loopool ever get and it's a fine exhibition. more plz. the final track, the preliminary work, clocks in at twelve and a half minutes and it's a beaut. slow and plodding musical arrangements, ambient noise in the background as well as repetitious manipulated vocals from garnier. at about three minutes into it there's new vocals (as the original loop keeps on looping) which are delivered in a kind of moaned, haunting, manner (accentuated by the overall feel of the track), still, they're really not the attention grabber, that belongs to the music itself. i think this was the most that jean-paul's vocals have been on display. if this is a new musical direction for him, it'll be an interesting one to keep an ear, or two, out for.while the shortness of courtesy's running time might stir hesitancy in some people, it is packed with other goodies. when i pulled the lp out of its sleeve, at first i was bummed by the color that i saw: black. black?! a not not fun twelve inch that doesn't have a cool color?..then i flipped it around and holy crap...the etching on it is fucking amazing. click on the picture to get a bigger size so that you can see the detail. it's quite nice. plus, there's an hour long bonus cd-r entitled looks to feudalism. it's a minimal droner, but the fact that you're getting two albums for one has to make you feel a little better.

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