Joakim
Monsters & Silly Songs
Versatile
Paris-based producer/composer/DJ Joakim Bouaziz’s (aka Joakim) debut Monsters & Silly Songs (2006) is a wild journey of dreamy piano melodies wrapped around jagged punk rock guitars. The sonic 16-song adventure begins like a wondrously wacky Danny Elfman soundtrack to a Tim Burton movie.
Spliced with four “Monster” knob-twisting experiment interludes, the tracks click, purr, buzz, and percolate, as they roll out across the digital wonderland like a thick metallic fog stretched out over an epic electronic fairy tale landscape full of life and character where you can either dance or sit back and absorb.
Along the way you encounter new wave wanderers, deep-house forest monsters and deviant dance floor devils tempting you to boogie. “Peter Pan Over Bronx” soars like a star streaking across the album’s inky backdrop, leaving behind a trail of serendipitous stardust. The haunting “I Wish You Were Gone” trickles like a rolling electro-crystal-blue stream with a deep-house thumping undercurrent. Joakim may think that his re-purposed post-punk interpretations are silly, but I don’t think they are once they’ve swallowed you up.
