Goteki - Geisha

Now, Goteki is an act that I have never heard of before, but I am damn sure glad I found them recently. Their earlier work based around the early 2000's revolved around the industrial circuit, but their most recent release of 'Geisha' takes it back to more simple and soothing electro.

The first and title song is "Geisha", and it's beautiful. It has a nice little bass drop present throughout the whole song, and has very Asian centric roots blended in with electro beats. It's like robots making love to feudal Japan. The vocals are pleasant enough, and flow to the beat like any good vocals should. They also are a bit electronic, but it's not tampered with bad at all; again, think the eighties. The whole song is great, and I would go so far as to call this one song a masterpiece.

But, that's also where the problem lies within this album. "Geisha" manages to make wonderful work of the album, and sets the bar extremely high for the rest of the album to follow up on. And sadly, that never happens. "Revenge of the Saucerman" is a very sci fi oriented song, putting in a faster paced electro beat, and sounds like something that would be played during a chase scene in an alien movie.

The remixes are also very well done, but each of them still cannot manage to beat out the original song. There are also two other forms of "Geisha", one being an instrumental version of the song, and the other an extended version. The instrumental is interesting, as the mere beat of "Geisha" is awesome, but the extended version didn't do much. It added a new intro, with a few more electronically tampered vocals, and the ending follows a similar path. In other words, it really wasn't necessary at all.

The final song is, yet again, another version of "Geisha", except it is an older version of it, dating back to 2002. It's a remastered version, and it's the weakest song on the album; it was probably added in at the end just to show where the EP got its roots from. However, again, it's weak.

However, the bad is not enough to undermine the good. The whole album sounds like a huge throwback to the eighties. Basically, if this were a movie, it'd be Refn's Drive; it has the feeling of everything that made the eighties great, but it's fresh enough to make it modern. The remixes are decent, and, even if some of the album is a repeat, it is still amazing. I have not been this entranced by one song in a while, so keep this album on your radar. It shall be released on March 1st, so be sure to get it when it comes out. Feb 11 2013