Review of Ice Cream Truckin' from Ektopia
The toy piano extravaganza known as Twink has done it again...
Back in June 2002 (Have I really been doing this for more than 5 years?!) I discovered Twink. Since then, I've been enjoying those toy piano sounds on a regular basis and more recently been enjoying them with my baby daughter too (well she looks like she likes it so that's good enough for me). Back in 2005 I finally got hold of Twink, Supercute & The Toy Box and a couple of months later I got my mitts on The Broken Record. While the first outings were simply Twink tunes, The Broken Record was a mash-up of vintage kids vinyl! I can remember thinking to myself, how do you follow this one up? What's next for Twink? Back to the original style or something new? Well, apart from those choices there were a couple of other obvious ones that I hadn't really thought of. There's the obligatory Best Of Twink album and also the Twink Remixed. It's the later of these two that has hit the streets today with Twink's latest release, Ice Cream Truckin'.
Rather than have Twink's old tunes remixed, Twink has created new pieces, melodies and ditties and passed these around to a chosen collection of musicians to remix, rework and generally tinker with. These musicians include Bardacid, Cozy Pony, Daniel Brockman and Tanya Paglia of The Hidden, Don Limpio, Ergo Phizmiz, Evan Morris, Jason Dragon, Milk Monster, MNK, Mochipet, Moon Holiday, nonnon, Norm Scott, Playsoundz, Rainbow Maze, Ralph Muha, Wayne Marshall, and Wendy Mittelstadt.
Experimental-electro sits comfortably next to some nifty drum 'n' bass. In fact there a couple of drum 'n' bass tunes on the CD. Both are great but Wayne Marshall's Strawberry Swirl takes it by a nose due to its mellow down-tempo darkness for me. Actually, it's not orthodox drum 'n' bass as such but it does share many of its glitchy elements. Mochipet's Rocket Pop edges on the drum 'n' bass borders too with its glitchy industro-pop sound. Jeez, I never thought I would have thought up 'industro-pop' up and an authentic musical genre! Breakbeat lovers are also well catered for. MNK's Mint Chip chugs away nicely making you move back and forth (well it makes me move anyway!). As the end of the CD comes near the mood mellows to a couple of cracking ambient chillers with Bardacid's awesome Dreamsicle and Jason Dragon's experimental Rocky Road. For me though, the highlight of the CD comes at the end with the metal madness that it s The Hidden's Ice Cream Headache. It starts off just like a Twink Classic but before you have any real time to evaulate it further it turns into something more like a Ministry tune or Animal Rights era Moby tune. It's superb fun and will have even the elderly pogoing around their retirement home's living room!
Twink have some free goodies to give away at the moment including a lovely downloadable ice cream truck so you can play as you listen to the mighty remixes. As usual with each Twink release, the packaging is perfect. This time it's a colourful half-tone ice cream truck with lotsa over-sized ice cream paraphernalia surrounding it. It's a perfect cover for the album. So, while I sit here enjoying Ice Cream Truckin' I'm finding myself wondering what the future holds for Twink. All I know is that I'm along for the long haul (in the back of the ice cream truck!) and am sure that whatever it is will only ever be as good if not better than what's already been done. I hope that truck keeps rolling for many more years to come.