This California duo (formerly trio) sort-of-snuck onto the scene years ago with a vaguely Seefeelish sound that, while light-years ahead of Seefeel and quite futuristically pretty, still left you wondering when they were going to grow up and start living up to their capabilities. Then, like mostly everyone else from the late-90's Darla/Clairecords scene who obviously had talent, Sweet Trip seemed to just plain disappear. It seems, now, that they just spent the last 3 years doing exactly all the growing up they needed. "Velocity : Design : Comfort" ventures into a deliciously queer Lexx: The Dark Zone world where sound maniac Scott Cortez, that nutty Kidwell brat from Cex, and the insane cyborg replica of Mirah Yom-Tov Zietlyn get together with Electric Company's "Studio City" and enough drugs to warp space-time. The result? A record that sometimes makes your brain slurp right out your nostrils and crawl up, inchworm-like, to the CD player to see if the damn thing's skipping. I know, cos that's happened to me a few times already. You want to make your brain hop up and go "what"? Listen to this CD and you won't be able to avoid it. Whether it's the cuddly Mirah-like slow ballad of "International", the digital bliss-out of "To All the Dancers of the World", or the more old-fashioned ("Fish"-era) Sweet Trip sound of "Dedicated", there's enough pure postmodern bliss to turn anyone's heart - with still enough digital mayhem to put hardcore kids like DJ Skeeter out of business and into the hospital.This record is simultaneously a pretty girl holding a fluffy kitten in the shiniest of mists, and a wacky cartoon weasel plucking out your eyeballs with hilariously surrealistic results. The genius is, it never ventures too far into either direction. But you're still going to think your CD player is broken, I promise you. Oh, there's some pretty standard homages to My Bloody Valentine here, like the song "Chocolate Matter" - no, skip that; the standard homage to MBV nowadays is to suck like a Godspeed jam-band, while "Chocolate Matter" is maybe more pretty and poppy than anything Kev's ever managed to do. But please please please, don't let that reference put you off the CD, because it's so much more than that. It's digital hardcore meets bliss-out meets a 21st-century hi-fi The Microphones meets musical postmodernism meets an insanely self-referential plunderphonics. "Velocity : Design : Comfort", more than anything else, is *THE* album that, in an ideal world, would drag them damn Kids of Today kicking and screaming into a new millenium. If you are only going to buy one CD this year, buy this one, you have to.

By John Merral
Nov 30, 2003

This California duo (formerly trio) sort-of-snuck onto the scene years ago with a vaguely Seefeelish sound that, while light-years ahead of Seefeel and quite futuristically pretty, still left you wondering when they were going to grow up and start living up to their capabilities. Then, like mostly everyone else from the late-90's Darla/Clairecords scene who obviously had talent, Sweet Trip seemed to just plain disappear. It seems, now, that they just spent the last 3 years doing exactly all the growing up they needed. "Velocity : Design : Comfort" ventures into a deliciously queer Lexx: The Dark Zone world where sound maniac Scott Cortez, that nutty Kidwell brat from Cex, and the insane cyborg replica of Mirah Yom-Tov Zietlyn get together with Electric Company's "Studio City" and enough drugs to warp space-time. The result? A record that sometimes makes your brain slurp right out your nostrils and crawl up, inchworm-like, to the CD player to see if the damn thing's skipping. I know, cos that's happened to me a few times already. You want to make your brain hop up and go "what"? Listen to this CD and you won't be able to avoid it. Whether it's the cuddly Mirah-like slow ballad of "International", the digital bliss-out of "To All the Dancers of the World", or the more old-fashioned ("Fish"-era) Sweet Trip sound of "Dedicated", there's enough pure postmodern bliss to turn anyone's heart - with still enough digital mayhem to put hardcore kids like DJ Skeeter out of business and into the hospital.This record is simultaneously a pretty girl holding a fluffy kitten in the shiniest of mists, and a wacky cartoon weasel plucking out your eyeballs with hilariously surrealistic results. The genius is, it never ventures too far into either direction. But you're still going to think your CD player is broken, I promise you. Oh, there's some pretty standard homages to My Bloody Valentine here, like the song "Chocolate Matter" - no, skip that; the standard homage to MBV nowadays is to suck like a Godspeed jam-band, while "Chocolate Matter" is maybe more pretty and poppy than anything Kev's ever managed to do. But please please please, don't let that reference put you off the CD, because it's so much more than that. It's digital hardcore meets bliss-out meets a 21st-century hi-fi The Microphones meets musical postmodernism meets an insanely self-referential plunderphonics. "Velocity : Design : Comfort", more than anything else, is *THE* album that, in an ideal world, would drag them damn Kids of Today kicking and screaming into a new millenium. If you are only going to buy one CD this year, buy this one, you have to.

By John Merral
Jan 25, 2004