We Hear You by Luke Vibert
LABEL: Planet Mu

“Vibert ironically lifts the great Mel Blanc’s legendary Marvin the Martian character, and lets the sentence ride on a gently bounce of bass and wavy piano synths, evolving into what ends up sounding like a walk in a city park on acid.”

Luke Vibert is the Mel Blanc of electronic musicians, a fellow “Man of a Thousand Voices.” To date, the musician has published his music under no less than 8 monikers, each assumed named carrying with them an assumed style in which Vibert composes. Whether it is drum and bass, IDM, hip-hop styled electronica, or club techno, one can be assured that Vibert has a matching musical personality through which he performs. However, when you listen to an album carrying his birth name, you can be sure that you’re in for a masterful collage of styles, synths and samples that will keep you listening from beginning to end. His new album from Planet Mu records, We Hear You, is no exception.

The one thing that always stands out in a Vibert record is the groove. While listening, you can close your eyes and see the bedroom musician tinkering away at his various synths, digging through his stacks of wax, finding that one synth or sample that sits just right. He finds the rhythm of the spoken word of a sample, or the natural rhythm in which a synth undulates, and builds upon the groove, creating a sonic journey for the listener. This is completely evident in “Computer Complex,” in which Vibert ironically lifts the great Mel Blanc’s legendary Marvin the Martian character, and lets the sentence ride on a gently bounce of bass and wavy piano synths, evolving into what ends up sounding like a walk in a city park on acid. 

“'I’ll beat that bitch with a bat.'”

Speaking of samples, this album does not disappoint regarding the trademark Vibert style of making gold out of garbage. Only Luke can make a sample of a kid with a lisp saying “acid music” sound appropriate in context, as it does on “Pretty Old Acid Music.” Beginning with by proclaiming that “England is a bitch,” the funky groove “Batting for England” thematically centers around the word ”˜bitch’, somehow finding a pretty decent rhythm within the sentence, “I’ll beat that bitch with a bat.”

Vibert’s albums are interesting, in that they almost go out of their way to buck homogeny. We Hear You playfully bounces from early-90s electronic to hip-hop to acid-techno to house and back, and for some reason it just feels right. Even within the ridiculous Fantastic Plastic Machine-esque track “Porn Shirtwee,” Vibert manages to not alienate the listener with its radical musical personality switches.  Likely to blame is the fact that Vibert’s synths seem timeless, carefully constructed from simple sine and square waves, carefully softened or sharpened to fit perfectly in context. These keep his album, and indeed his entire oeuvre , sounding like they just belong together.

We Hear You is a great addition to Vibert’s body of work, mischievously surprising you with its sample-laden easter-egg hunt and keeping your head nodding with inventive grooves. Vibert’s decade and a half of experience allows for effortless hooks that stick in your head way past their welcome. (The album’s title track is still playing in my head when I wake up in the morning.) As the opening track “Belief File” politely informs, “You just put the needle on a really unique record album...preferably in a residential area.”


REVIEWED BY GUY THILLET
GUY’S FAVORITE TRACKS:  “We Hear You” · “De-pimp Act” · “Computer Complex” · “Marvellous Music Machine”


Preview & purchase the album from Other Music