Wnico
Bon Voyage
Kill Rock Stars
Beastie Boys fans - the ones who like the fast back-alley punk stuff as much as the rap tunes - will flip over Japan's Wnico. Fourteen tracks in about twenty-two minutes, crashing headlong into blazing low-fi Bad Brains-style punk, all sloppy and mixed till you can almost hear the needles on the mixing board plowing into the red. Then, before you know it, a kitschy Shonen Knifey rap part comes in, leavened with a big metal guitar, and then onto a dub number without so much as time to breathe. A crazy trainwreck of a record, but it's a damn good time, every element thrown into the blender with what seems to be a uniquely Japanese guilelessness, then liquefied at the highest speed possible. The only question I have is, why the hell isn't Wnico signed to Grand Royal yet?? Kill Rock Stars, 120 NE State St. #418, Olympia, WA 98501
--Keith Bergman
