LAL LAL LAL #29
Cassette, released in 2006

DIGITAL VERSION NOT AVAILABLE
Cassette copies here: www.discogs.com/Fricara-Pacchu-Space-Puppet/release/859655

A1 Intro
A2 Road Robot
A3 Strobo Fields Forever
A4 Human Friend
A5 Snail Territory
A6 Megasolar Bodyslam
B1 Acoustic Horse
B2 Stoneage Waydream
B3 Ray Of Light
B4 Slave Rock

"I suppose it may be a bit irrelevant (not to mention irreverent), to mention that the band name Fricara Pacchu makes me think of a Peruvian quiche. All told, it’s probably as apt a description of things to come as any. Absurd and amazing in equal measure, "Space Puppet" wreaks chaos all over the damn place, at times reminiscent of Suicide, and at others, Richard James and his circus of madness. This is dirty, dirty music, and it has no interest in cleaning up. We should all be glad of this fact.

On a backbeat of dirty, scratchy techno, a la Casiotone, Pacchu lays down the electronic law. With more than enough manic flourish to go around, this is a frantic but compelling listen.

Lal Lal Lal, Finland’s cassette based label, is a true home for the bizarre Finnish underground, and definitely worth tracking down. I know next to nothing about Finland, but it certainly does spice up my image of that icy, distant land to imagine a country full of guys like Fricara Pacchu ambling about, collecting half-broken electronic devices (old phones, cracked toys, transistor radios, shitloads of Casiotones, etc…), and taking them back to his/her (?) hovel and turning this heap of other folks castaways and making music this intimately bizarre.

But hats off to Fricara Pacchu, because this is one fantastic tape. Now I’m no completist when it comes to the cassette underground, but if the stuff I’ve heard these past few months (Lal Lal Lal releases, Death Chants, a few others), is any indication, this is the new frontier for experimental, and undeniably fascinating music.

Here’s the deal: buy this tape (I don’t care how), wear it out, and as always, thank me later." - John Cramer / foxy digitalis

"New cassette album from this member of Maniacs Dream is a couple of synth bloops removed from his previous tape that blew out a whole bunch of ears with its radical re-think of brain-storming psychedelic rock. This one is a lot more about electro-rhythms and synth pulse, somewhere between the Suicide of Mr Ray and Diamonds, Fur-Coat, Champagne, Coil circa Nasa Arab and some personally-doomy real-people early 80s Kosmiche/synth record. Which makes it sound pretty great, and it kind of is." - Volcanic Tongue

"Fricara Pacchu is actually the solo project of a dude by the same name what plays in Maniacs Dream. So, there's some six degrees of seperation there...actually it's more like one degree...but still. The other tape I liked so much was called "Waydom" and it was a severe dose of one man gang psych-rock sounds like nothing I've ever heard before. Where do you go after you've singlehandedly destroyed the entire canon of recorded psychedelic musics? Into techno, apparently. Okay that's kind of a misnomer but the best "band blender" description I can come up with for "Space Puppet" is Coil crossed with the Boredoms mixed with Aphex Twin. Playful Casio/toy-sounding looped samples, effects, brutality and sleazy electronica/techno. Lots of tape manipulation (according to Lal Lal Lal this was recorded with a four-tracker made of Pacchu's nails; don't ask). All these tracks have different names but they bleed together and there's no real point in trying to differentiate them all, but they do have great names: "Strobo Fields Forever", "Megasolar Bodyslam", "Stoneage Waydream"). These two sides of magnetic love are coated with space, the cosmos psychedelia, ur-noise, synthesizer, keyboard and sometimes a surprisingly intimidating percussion stampede. And everything up and down and in between. Heavily processed childish beats, rhythms, squelches, sound effects...it's like IDM without the so-called "intelligence" and it's all the more glorious for it. Kinda like a retarded AFX or Venetian Snares at their least solemn. Yeah. The first two tracks on the second side smacked me particularly daintily; the first one being a load of Boredoms-type swoosh that you might be inspired to tag as trip-hop if that wasn't such an absurd term in and of itself. More like: Trip. Hop. Dig? And the second one is a heavier, more rock-ish beast with all different kinds of flailing limbs attacking cymbals and strings and anything else at hand. "I will not attempt to further define pornography here today, but I know it when I hear it" -Potter Stewart. What a hep cat." - Matt / Outer Space Gamelan