- A campy carnival of techno and house like only Public Possession could pull off.
- While it might be hard to find a sonic throughline in the diverse back catalogue of the Munich-based label and record store Public Possession, there is a distinct sense of humor. Whether the Ketamine Boogie of Mr. Tophat or the pinball symphonies of Anton Klint, the label, as Oli Warwick put it in our Label Of The Month feature, is concerned with "exciting, surprising and eminently danceable music." Enter Melbourne's Ruby Kerkhofs, AKA Nice Girl. Her first two 12-inches for Public Possession took this anti-serious ethos seriously, skating across trance, early '00s tribal and oddball house with a gleeful goofiness. She only gets weirder on debut album Ipsum, which sends trance and New Age styles through the looking glass with a Carollian ear for the wacky.
The lighthearted mood of the record comes down to Kerkhofs' choice of vocals, both sampled and her own, especially on the more straight-ahead techno cuts. You have the speeding synth swerving dangerously close to the edge on the heads-down groove of "Cool Dudes In Hot Water." But when the high-pitched "me" vocal loop and throat singing comes in it becomes too tongue-in-cheek for us to imagine in a Donato Dozzy set. "Cosmic Pratt" also clocks in at over 140 BPM with a touch of sci-fi in its robotic voices. But here, again, the effect is more camp than claustrophobic, like hitting fast-forward on the controls of Disneyland's It’s A Small World ride. "Hot mm & Hmms" is like an Objekt track made with porn samples.
There are also glimpses of house and '80s synth pop, while Kerkhofs tie-dyes the whole spectrum of New Age spiritualism complete with digeridoo-aping basslines ("Erotic Aroma") and gated vocals (on the Andean goddess of fertility-referencing "Pachamamama"). That all of these songs are on one album is fairly mind-boggling, and listening to all 15 tracks can be slightly dizzying (I haven't even mentioned the chillout electronica of "Awry" or the skanking dub of "The Coming").
But this isn't a bad thing. If anything, it's testament to just how strong a debut album Ipsum is. Kerkhofs joins the long list of Public Possession alumni who have been taking dance music tropes and making them weird, sometimes even hilarious, without losing sight of what makes them danceable. While so much of electronic music's retromania can end up coming across as a bit stiff-lipped, bordering on the humorless, Kerkhof's 15-tracks make dancing feel fun, even silly.
Tracklist01. Erotic Aroma
02. Pachamama
03. Cool Dudes In Hot Water
04. Ipsum
05. Dance
06. Awry
07. The Coming
08. Cosmic Pratt
09. HTP
10. Hot mm & Hmm's
11. Way With Fantasy
12. Yardmaster Pt. II feat. Eden Burns
13. Hot mm & Hmm's (Club Mix)