You have a friend in Wagon Christ

>> Luke Vibert on his chummy lil' Musipal

by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

If electronic music often strikes you as cold, distant and about as jovial as Bell Canada's "your call has been forwarded" e-lady, you'll be happy to wrap your ears around Musipal, the latest release under the Wagon Christ tag by U.K. beat-freak Luke Vibert. While there's a fair count of moody, mysterious ruminations in there, that's as dark and alienating as it gets.

"I find it a friendly, almost toned-down album," Vibert says, "compared to the one I sort of imagined in my head, because I've been doing a lot of acidy stuff last year, a bit more brutal stuff and a couple of really extreme drum & bass tracks. None of those really fit when it came to putting the album together. I think that's why I came up with that title, a friendly-sounding name. Looking back to older Wagon Christ stuff, I thought, nah, it shouldn't be this dark. I'll save the scary acid stuff for another time."

Or another name--Vibert's drum & bass excursions get packaged as Plug (remember Drum 'n' Bass For Papa?) while Mo'Wax releases material under his own name. Furthermore, he jams frequently with British steel-guitar old-tymer B.J. Cole ("He's very similar to me, actually--almost more childish than I am"), and has been known to work with U-ziq, aka Mike Paradinas, as the duo Smooth Helmet. "It was just one track," Vibert recalls, "but we never released the actual track. I just did a remix of it, which kind of totally fucked it up, but in a good way. The original went on for about 15 means, with too many keyboard solos by Mike, so I brutalized it and made it into a drum & bass track." Going by that, collabs with Deep Purple's John Lord seem out of the question.

Musipal finds Wagon Christ hitching up to Ninja Tune after a long stretch at Astralwerks. "I feel really comfortable with Ninja--I've known them for ages. Some of the first gigs I did in London were with the Coldcut guys at the Big Chill. It's almost like I should have signed with them years ago." The Ninja connection jives, given Vibert's primo beat-cobbling and also his omnipresent element of snarky, underhanded wackiness--"Even in the hardest tracks I do, there's lots of fun involved."

The fun on Musipal starts before you even get it out of the plastic. Dig the little ro-buddy on the cover, the "musipal" in question. Drawn by one Celyn Brazier, it was inspired by all the nutty junk in Vibert's studio. "I think it was also the really good weed I had," snickers Vibert, "and the fact that I made him do it for hours. I could see it all developing."

Brazier's little amigo is now the star of the animated video for the first single, "Receiver." Vibert describes it so: "It's the little guy and how he first came into existence. Then he's chased by loads of robots, then at the end, he ends up coming out in my studio, and he realizes the whole thing took place inside my weirdest keyboard." Watch for it on Much--or maybe in the background on Friends?

With YRDM and visuals by Eric Microfiche at Tokyo on Wednesday, May 16, 10pm, $13