July 2000

Don't Stop the Panic!

Stop the Panic Luke Vibert/BJ Cole Astralwerks 2000

I have been listening to Stop the Panic by Luke Vibert & BJ Cole for about three days straight now. It is really quite impressive. I heard a few tracks off of this album a few weeks ago and though that this might be a good listen. My suspicions were to prove correct.

Stop the Panic seems to be an almost exactly precise musical manifestation of Action Relaxin'. Action Relaxin', you will recall, is all about doing nothing (i.e. relaxing) with tremendous intensity. Listening to Stop the Panic really brings a sense of that about. There are good reasons for this and I shall try to explain them.

The first hint of this album's power to induce the proper state of Action Relaxin' is obvious. You only need to look at the cover to realize that this disc will be Hawai-tastic. But it's all Hawaiian in a totally new way. Luke Vibert is a DJ. BJ Cole is a pedal steel player. They get together and mix it up somethin' fierce. They must have realized that a somewhat Hawaiian theme would meld their styles perfectly. The mix between Luke Vibert's swinging big beats and BJ Cole's Sandwich-Islands-styled pedal steel is just the right combination of up and down to really get you going without working up too much of a sweat. It's quite the Hawaiian Punch.

That's not to say that this album is nothing but a Hawaiian extravaganza. Vibert and Cole bring a lot of influences to the table. In Stop the Panic one can hear tinges of Indian Raga, Exotica (like Esquivel and Martin Denny), quality Hip Hop (as in Digable Planets, not that Puffy hack), and old school country and bluegrass. It's quite a combination.

On a few tracks Vibert and Cole can really twist the ear of the listener, much the same as Modeski, Martin & Wood tend to. It's not unpleasant to hear, just different. It just hits you right in the middle of a song. What the hell is this? Then you remember what you were doing before you became so engrossed in listening. Then the relaxing waves of sound wash back over you again, and it's all good.

Banjo finger pickin' laid over a dope beat with some fiddle thrown in for good measure? A laid back, swingin' beat behind some really spectacularly lazy sounding pedal steel? Some occasional freaky raga? Horns? Strings? Ethereal backing vocals? Yeah, Stop the Panic has all of that. I must say that Stop the Panic is an extremely apropos title. You can't help but kick back and relax when you hear it.