Melt Banana - Teeny Shiny

by Maarten Schiethart

published: 17 / 12 / 2001

Label: A-Zap
Format: CD

intro

Despite having shocked a small circle of devotees in a most pleasant manner for over six years now, Melt Banana have never reached the status of the likeminded Minutemen. Melt Banana don't use Americ

Despite having shocked a small circle of devotees in a most pleasant manner for over six years now, Melt Banana have never reached the status of the likeminded Minutemen. Melt Banana don't use American imagery. Surrealistic themes dominate their music and it's dada over gaga. The Japanese missing link between The B52s and The Dead Kennedys are wacky to their bones. Despite having put out just a few releases, Melt Banana have recorded over a hundred tracks, and the A Zap label have made available their two studio albums plus a compilation of their early cassettes and live recordings. 'Teeny Shiny', one of these albums, is a concise attempt at pure hardcore pop. Melt Banana hand out the finest splashes of hardcore driven punkpop. It takes repeated plays for the unsuspecting listener to get into the groove of what initially sounds like spastic and absurdist chaos. By the time you get to the closing track of the first side, 'Third Attack' you've fastened your seatbelts but nevertheless you're shot into orbit by just some of them greatest guitar, erm, something ever. It's not a riff. It's not a solo either, What makes Melt Banana so unique is the ability to include the sound of a guitar when you would expect a chorus from a human voice. Simultaneously that guitar projects a storyline of the sort that you would normally anticipate from an organ, or a bass lead. On 'Teeny Shiny', Melt Banana incorporate flashes of turntablism, not entirely random noises and found speech - like a phone message from the band's Italian distributor, Discordi. The whole album is a splendid pastiche of strummed hardcore with poppy edges. As this is the Melt Banana album with the least but the best tracks, I won't be moved from the principal that Melt Banana are the very finest of today's bands . You have to put in a little sacrifice. They're loud. The singer comes across as frantic if you've never heard her before. There is, however, something somewhere on 'Teeny Shiny' that shows that Melt Banana mark a new era in music. File next to The Beatles In The Cavern. Forty years onwards.

Track Listing:-

1 Free The Bee
2 Flash Cube, Or Eyeball
3 Lost In Mirror
4 First Contact To Planet Q
5 Warp, Back Spin
6 Third Attack
7 Cub, Not Cube
8 Flip And Hit
9 Bright Splat (Red Point, Black Dot)
10 Skint Closed, Windy
11 Moon Flavor

live reviews

Garage, London, 20/11/2005

Japanese experimentalists Melt Banana are a band of no middle ground,annoying and exciting music fans in equal measure. Jamie Rowland enjoys a rare UK appearance at a gig at the London Garage

Barrymore's, Ottawa, 18/11/2005

Nijmegen Doonroosje, 26th September