This, then, is the easy life. In their six-year music-making history, The Micronauts, the Paris-based pair comprising diminutive Greek-Canadian George Issakidis and impressively cheekboned Frenchman Christophe Monier, have released three singles, turned in a handful of extraordinary remixes and cultivated a healthy reputation for enjoying, shall we say, the more stimulating privileges readily available to the middle-weight DJing order.
And it shows. For who else but a group whacked out on scooby snacks would call their last three tracks of unparalleled acid house hedonism ‘The Jazz’, ‘The Jam’ and ‘The Jag’, and with each fail, quite magnificently, to duck under the ten-minute mark? In these respects, ‘Bleep To Bleep’, a 45-minute, nine-track ‘mini-album’ which was supposed to be a single until the boys got carried away, shows good signs of development: only one track, the final, bassbin-bustin’ freaky techno fry-up ‘Bleeper’, sidles up to 11 minutes (it’s too short), while the clever wordplay now tends to involve the word ‘Bleep’.
Here, too, you can fully understand why The Chemical Brothers have consistently endorsed the production methods and attitude of Issakidis and Monier (see also the ‘Nauts’ super-trashed rewiring of ‘Block Rockin’ Beats’), not least because The Micronauts are arguably the only group whose music, in its own progressively experimental way, remains true to the original spirit and sound of acid house. Basically, ‘Bleep To Bleep’ does exactly what it says on the tin, but with extra bleeping and a huge pink neon sign that reads: “Get Your Bleeps Here.”
Essentially one gloriously messy track broken into nine parts, the idea ‘Bleep To Bleep’ champions throughout is one of effectiveness through simplicity and repetition. Thus ‘Baby Wants To Bleep Pt 1’, along with Parts ‘2’, ‘3’, ‘4’ and, yes, ‘[k]’, gradually introduce the key elements and arrangements – cut-up acid deviance, avant-hard E-funk, spooked atmospherics, a swooping string motif, mucho bleeping – from which the closing dreamy, disorientating epic, ‘Bleeper’, is so thrillingly constructed. It’s science done properly: they show their workings, then give us the result.
Crazier still are ‘Bleeper_0+2’ and ‘Bleep To Bleep’, two supremely indulgent forays into textured noise that even out-weird the duo’s like-minded peers in registered electronica hotbeds such as Vienna and Berlin. Which is, well… [I]difficult[/I].
Aimed at the dancefloor but hitting somewhere far, far beyond, ‘Bleep To Bleep’ is the sound of two men lost, blissfully, in their own music. Long may they stay there.