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SHARKWEEK: Gimme Gimme Shark Treatment

I’ve developed an affection for Sharkweek over the years. Peter Lewis always seems to have a naive quality, like an idiot savant locked in a room full of Fisher Price play pianos. His work with Sean Murgatroyd in the Tom Bosley Experience reeked of bad acid, damp flats and the sweat of desperation. This remix album borders on proficient, perhaps in deference to the originating artists. There are bastardised cuts from Sick Cycle, SoNic Smith and The Illtronics. The treatments are less unhinged than Sharkweek-written material, but that’s not to say the tracks aren’t twisted into outlandish new shapes – Lewis will find a monologue or dialogue theme and cut up samples to provide a kind of narrative to the accompanying music bed. I don’t know how many machines he has, but there does seem to be a uniform attack: apply synthesised timbales, one finger keyboard riff and obscure vocal sample. Far Out Son of Lounge features a fruitloop astrologer who sounds decidedly unwholesome. Pitch Black’s Harmonia has been re-imagined with an Elvis discourse on rock n’ roll. Puff the Magic Draggin’ might soundtrack the next NORML national conference. The CD rocks, in a tripped out trance fashion.

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