Douglas Martin is the cure for the common cold.
In the weeks since Monster Rally earned a spot on the stratospherically prestigious Most Slept-On Records of 2010 List, you surely couldn’t blame them if they wanted to capitalize on their worldwide fame by setting up Twitter, Tumblr, and Gawker Dating profiles. Maybe an hour-long TV special, announcing that they’d take their talents to South Beach. But nothing transpired, not even a low-quality photo of the enigmatic creator(s) of the project, Burial-style. The only news we’ve received is the only news that matters: months after dropping free digital EP’s on their Bandcamp page, Monster Rally are preparing to release Coral, their very first physical full-length release.
Though a few of the tracks here are pinched from their stellar early work (such as “The Birds” Parts 1 and 2, fused together here for maximum effect), a lot of Coral finds the crate connoisseurs flipping their obscure samples over dusty drum loops and inspired beat programming, sometimes to show that they can almost live up to the loads of Madlib comparisons they’ve received (“Rainbow Rd.,“ the bouncy “Land Ho/Masasu,” the lush “Cuban Velvet“), but primarily to bolster the Caribbean feel of most of their best work (“Sun Bum,” “Swamp Campfire,” “Splash Talk”). All in all, I think Jeff summed it up quite succinctly here: “With the Avalanches marooned in the Outback, Monster Rally win the race to get the closest to ‘Frontier Psychiatrist.’ I’m also really hoping that “Splash Talk” is a euphemism for a frank sexual discussion.”
Coral (in a super-limited run of 250 sea-foam green copies on vinyl) will be released on January 11th and can be pre-ordered here, via Gold Robot Records.
Download:
MP3: Monster Rally-“Swamp Campfire”
