Hardscore Surf, Wind & Desire

Now here's a band that could separate irk from quirk if you tend to keep your sounds squarely traditional. Surf Punks meets Oingo Boingo meets Zappa, maybe? Commissioned (!) by Belgium's De Wert Brogge, the profoundly-titled Surf, Wind & Desire is a sequence of humorous vignettes focusing on various aspects of beach culture and marine life. Hardscore's music parallels the lyrical goofiness of principal composer and marimba player Frank Nuyts without sounding avant for avant's sake. The quasi-epic "The Creep From The Deep" is sonic performance art, a comical chronology concerning the biological and social evolution of one Chuck The Fish. "Kite Control" and "Cod" are titled bluntly to cloak their surprises from the casual listener. Speaking of Nuyts, he and saxophonist Frank Debruyne slow-roasted this feast; the text reads like prose yet nearly every song can be blocked out in abba, abab or aabb (the most obvious exception being "Burnin' Off Love), certain wordings resembling the handiwork of arch-hedonist Ty Webb, probably penned while getting toasted in front of his Casiotone.