Review: Moscoman - Mexican Cola Bottle Baby - ESP Institute

Readers of a certain age may remember a kids’ programme called Picture Box. Like many things on Seventies TV, the opening credits were highly inappropriate for tender young minds. A spinning, out of focus, bejewelled objet d’art slowly came into shot while, in the background, the haunted fairground pipes of Lasry-Bachet’s  “Manège” scared the living shit out of anyone within earshot. It was amazing and a part of my childhood that is seared onto my frontal lobe – a tattooed memory that will never fade. 

Moscoman’s latest release, “Mexican Cola Bottle Baby” (a title that sounds worryingly like random words plucked from a Donald Trump Speech) manages to inhabit a similar place, due mainly to the wonderful kooky melody and otherworldly synth sound. Having said that, because it’s backed so beautifully by Moscoman’s trademark percussive precision, it’s also unashamedly uplifting. The result is, I imagine, exactly the sort of record that the Moomins would stick on after a couple of bumbles. In case you’re wondering, that’s a massive positive in my book. 

California’s Peaking Lights take the reins for the remix, adding echo, voice and stretching the whole into spacier territory. It’s a very different take, and identifiably Peaking Lights, but it’s clearly hewn from the same rock. The instrumental appears to be exactly that, though why anyone wouldn’t want to hear Indra Dunis’ subtly soporific vocals is, frankly, beyond me.

​It’s an outstanding record which lands on the 19th August in a year that has seen Moscoman’s star rise with every consistently killer release. So far in 2016 his label, Disco Halal, has released a contender for album of the year (Autarcik’s Can You Pass the Knife), reissued the legendary Tony Carey Project LP, and remixed it for the accompanying 12”. Add to that his phenomenal ESP release with Red Axes and the low-slung Morricone moves of the “Fernando” 12” on Eskimo records and he could pretty much shut up shop now and call it a success.
 
I bet he won’t though – he’s on a roll.
 
Barney Harsent