Hey! Bob! My Friend!

by

POLYSICS

Edit

being a devo fan from way back, seeing the picture of 3 tokyo mutants dressed up in yellow radiation suites and wearing 3-d sunglasses shocked an appalled me. out of pure indignation and disgust i bought their record "hey bob, my friend" and was neither shock nor appalled, i was delighted. my goodness i thought to myself, these 3 beautiful mutants of the east have so wonderfully built on the devo foundation while remaining unique and interesting. once again i am listening non stop, day and night to the sound of things falling apart. do the polysics care about food, genetics, the future, you bet...and more. the polysics provide musical calisthenics to toughen up a world gone soft.

Leave it upto the Japanese to make sense of a combination that shouldn't go together. 'Hey Bob My Friend' basically sounds like what would happen if grebo bands like Age Of Chance/Pop Will Eat Itself (or a more percussive Jesus And Mary Chain) had sex with R2D2. Abrasive thrashing guitars meets futuristic robotic bleeps, like guitar chaos meeting the analog noises of Stereolab on speed. The vocals shift from Nina Hagen chants to the playful call and response of Shonen Knife. Holding all of this craziness together is a thumping Joy Division-like backbeat, ensuring that none of this goes wildly astray. At first the sound seems unnerving and quirky, but after a few listens, you begin to recognize the rock intensity and rhythmic sensibility of The Polysics. Frenzied, futuristic, and noisy...but it still speaks the universal language of rock and roll.