Pinkunoizu’s Live at Loppen revives the mixtape
Thought mixtapes were a thing of the past. Think again.
By Chris Yee
[senior culture writer]
To promote Copenhagen-based experimental pop band Pinkunoizu’s first EP, Peep, London-based label Full Time Hobby (of Fujiya and Miyagi and School of Seven Bells fame) have released a mixtape, Live At Loppen, which documents a February 2010 show at the Loppen club in Freetown Christiania, which is also in Copenhagen (of course!).
Judging from their performance on Live At Loppen, Pinkunoizu isn’t bad – even if the resemblance to Kevin Drew’s oeuvre becomes a bit much to take at times.
Loppen opener “Dairy Queen” starts out with a slight Krautrock flavour, then ends sounding positively Canadian, like You, You’re a History in Rust-era Do Make Say Think or Broken Social Scene circa, well, Broken Social Scene. The following song in Pinkunoizu’s set on Loppen, “Lacuna Island” bears even more resemblance to something Kevin Drew might make.
“My Vacant Home” has an exultant opening with ironically vulgar chanting (or maybe it’s just me), while the vaguely Tom Waits-y “Perish in Hilton” has a slightly dopey title (guess why) with slightly less dopey lyrics and even less dopey atmospherics (more mopey than anything, actually).
Following “Perish in Hilton” is a vaguely Afrobeat-tinged rendition of “Reprise”, which does in fact make a reprise at the end of the next song in Pinkunoizu’s set, “Somber Ground”. Finally, Loppen closes with “Time Is Like A Melody”, perhaps the best of Pinkunoizu’s set, with vocals and instrumentals emerging beautifully from what seems to be a protracted sound check, in a lush yet faithful rendition of the Peep version of this song.
Even considering the concert recorded on Live at Loppen was almost an impromptu event, Pinkunoizu seems to be a hit-or-miss affair. “Dairy Queen” is a promising opener (even if it does lose a little direction toward the end) and “Time Is Like A Melody” is a wonderful closer, but the rest of the songs seem to be of mixed quality, with “Somber Ground” perhaps being the most boring one out of the bunch. Ultimately, though, Loppen shows a different band from the one on the Peep EP, one distinctly jazzier than the other.
