Panties were flying, girlies were dancing, and everyone was buzzing on Chopped Zombie Fungus last Friday night, as musician Otto von Schirach threw a release party of sorts for his new album at Objex in the Design District.
So what does Chopped Zombie Fungus have to do with electronic music? Well, the words alone mark the end of Otto von Schirach’s beat driven, and for some, assaulting, trilogy of EPs, including Boombonic Plague, Pelican Moondance and Ear Juice Synthesis (all released on Miami’s Schematic Records). It is these three volumes plus two bonus tracks that make up the beat skittering and silly improv MCing on his new full-length, Chopped Zombie Fungus.
The party at Objex was far from anything remotely related to the South Beach scene some of us are familiar with, no thanks to the E! network. For starters, the venue, which Life & Art has featured in a past edition, is located near the out-out-skirts of Miami’s Design District. This obscure location complemented the strange style of electronic music that began to spew forth from the various beat machines and laptops.
The first two DJs, Mioc and Karaketer, bombarded ears with tribal, distorted, and at times, syncopated rhythms. Danny Labura, a Miami based electronic musician began the series of performances with a bursting and gushing array of sounds. Try to imagine a laptop having an orgasm in each of its drives and secretly recording the separate climaxes. Each artist following Danny L. seemed to take a similarly explosive approach, teetering on the fringe of pure insanity. The rest of the show, following sets by Otto, Dino, and Phoenecia, sought a form of solace from boxing random sounds into proper structure, and in turn extracted abstract sense from the chaotic sounds heard in cities and cubicles day in and out.
Tim Gullien can be reached at djpancake@lycos.com. Tim is one of the DJs on the “Electric Kingdom,” which can be heard every Monday from 10 p.m.- 1a.m. on WVUM 90.5.