Post #291646 by I, Zombie on Tue, Mar 13, 2007 4:57 PM

Great topic! At first I was skeptical, because it's always easier to explain why you don't like something rather than explain why you like something. But your post has brought up some interesting insights from folks. Thanks for doing this.

I'll have to think about the original question some more, but one thing I couldn't let pass without comment is your choice of "Most Irritating Exotica album." Magne's Tropical Fantasy may be one of the top Exotica lPs of all time. And I say this for the very reasons you don't care for it -- high pitched bird whistles, screeches, bells, xylophones, cartoon-quality tympanis, unharmonic and possibly even drunk females yelling -- yeah, it's "difficult listening-hour" aspects are what make it great! Think of the intensity of his version of Tabu. The percussion and xylophones really conjure up the bones of skeletons, almost marching skeletons, crossing a windswept, moonlight plain. The combo of the spooky voices and instruments really push the melody up your spine, and that weird juxtaposition between Haitian Zombie attack and middle-eastern harem-scarem is beautiful. The bongos seem to be the only thing holding the whole thing together. All the best exotica has a scary and/or madness side. Baxter definitely understood this. Magne really takes it up a frightening notch (on Tabu for sure, as well as Sahara, Bahia, Congo Biem, and to a lesser extent Tropical and Peanut Vendor). It's up there with Johnny Richard's Rites of Diablo -- but that LP I really think was actually conceived to scare the bejesus out of your neighbor, so it's hard to compare the two.

Just my 2 cents. Again, thanks for the great post, and the thoughful comments.

~glen

[ Edited by: I, Zombie 2007-03-13 17:40 ]