Rinocerose - Rinocerose

Tue 8th Aug, 2006 in Music Reviews

Drawing newfound publicity from the feature of ‘Cubicle’ on a recent Ipod commercial, the French duet Rinocerose attempt to penetrate the Australian market through a “best of” type release, covering tracks from four of their albums released in the US and Europe over the last eight years. Such being the case, there are no surprises that the self-titled Australian release is disorderly, mix-matched and lacks the presumed flow that comes with an actual album release.

The most recent of the albums featured is Schizophonia (2005), which has a much greater focus on guitars than the other three, and is home to by far the most enjoyable tracks on the release, including the track essentially responsible for this disc: ‘Cubicle’. With a heavily distorted electro backing, simple drum beat and let’s party lyrics like “I got that lip-stick smeared around my face, I got them skinny girls playing at my place”, ‘cubicle’ was definitely a superb choice for the silhouette breakdances that we are used to seeing smeared all over the television. Also from Schizophonia is the opener ‘Bitch’, with an upbeat indie rock tempo that is well fused with electro hooks somewhat replicating Daft Punk, as well as some fast, fun lyrics that stem from repetitions of the word ‘bitch’.

Unfortunately that’s about where the fun ends with Rinocerose. And what is most unfortunate is that it’s only a few songs in. In the next block of tracks, drawing from Music Kills Me(2002) and Installation Sonore (1999), the guitars are dropped for a mix of chilled out house beats, suitable perhaps for art gallery openings, soirees or any function the black turtle neckers choose to attend. To add further confusion to the mix there are some random inclusions like ‘la guitaristic house organisation’, which moves towards a harder house break, save for one random guitar chord holding the beat.  The final three tracks, all stemming from Retrospective (1997), showcases an experimental side of Rinocerose into the mix-up of chilled beats that would have probably been slightly enjoyable had it not been for the random, all over the shop sounds that preceded them.

It is surprising that V2 bothered with this amalgamation as a whole and didn’t just release ‘bitch’ and ‘cubicle’ as singles in Australia, where they would undoubtedly be welcomed. Alternatively, it might be a case of the record label adding a bunch of old tracks to two new ones (one of which just happened to be on an ipod ad), calling it an album and charging full tilt for it. Either way, only true fans of French synth will see this as a worthwhile addition to their collection.