Artist: Misshawaii
Title: Hotel New Hawaii
Year: 2003
Dirname: Misshawaii-Hotel_New_Hawaii-2003-RFL

I love the internet. It's a great place, a wealth of resources right in front of you. It's also a great place to download music for free and discover artists you may otherwise never have heard of. I chanced on this album just because i thought the dirname sounded cool. It's usually a hit and miss affair but is such a cool way to discover new bands risk-free. I'm so glad i did with this album.

Misshawaii is actually a young Japanese guy from Hokkaido, a place you wouldn't really associate with being a pioneer of electronic music. Hotel New Hawaii is the latest album from this guy and is a total bag of sex. This album is original and inspiring, i certainly noticed some influences in there aswell. More notably i drew comparisons to Aphex Twin, Squarepusher, Alpine Stars, Thomas Schumacher and Fantastic Plastic Machine. Also throw in a bit of Air and Pizzicato 5 and you sort of have an idea of where this album lies genre-wise. It's difficult to brand really.

The best way i can describe Hotel New Hawaii is it's like a soundtrack to a Super Nintendo game on acid. I shit you not!

My favourite track is the opener, Airline. Every track on this album has a name relevant to the song, it's like the trackname is an introduction to make you think the appropriate things to the music. For example with Airline, it's upbeat, cheerful and blippy. The first thing i thought of was a cute, wobbly cartoon aeroplane with lots of happy families flying over a beach on their way to the airport to land and start their holiday. Down below i could see big, bright colours. Sun shining, kids playing in the sea and big hotel apartment blocks overlooking the sea. It's stange how music can conjure up such thoughts. One of the only other tracks i could really recall having this effect on me is the excellent Lagoon by Dave Angel that came out around 1995 (i urge you to check it out it's excellent).

The album then surges along with varying tracks at varying tempos ending on two epic tracks of around 13mins each. The whole album is like one big acid trip. If you've ever heard anything by the artists i've associated Misshawaii with, you'll already have a fair idea of what to expect. If you don't i urge you to check this album out, it's original and genuinely good. Also check out track 6 I Want Do which is similar in style to Afuken and the recent MINISTRY OF SHIT album. See how many samples you can spot in there. One you can spot straight away is Charly by Prodigy. Guess the rest!

Well worth a download, but in my case a purchase!

FINAL SCORE: 9.5/10

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Last edited by Mystic Slippers on 01-10-2004 at 07:40 PM

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