2007-05-16

a&e "oi!" new album out now on sonig (april 2007)!

For those who can recall the anarchic elektro-punk approach of the predecessor “Bootleg”, A&E’s new album “Oi!” will come as a surprise – and that’s putting it mildly. The rest – i.e. those who’ve never heard a single note of the duo’s music and do not know anything about the protagonists’ activities or their histories – will also be surprised. Why? Because traditional sounding Japanese singing in combination with a deftly played jazz guitar plus sounds from gameboys and junkshop keyboards plus solid punk drums is clearly something you won’t hear every day. And while we’re at it: That also goes for the duo’s combination of drum’n’bass mayhem and Hawaiian lap steel sounds. And these are not the only fiendish concoctions A&E have in store for their audience.
Luckily, A&E have retained their crazy (bordering on lunatic) humour and their inventiveness in dealing with all the stuff that popular music has come up with in, say, the last 70 years. Both are virtues of the venturous and cutting-edge present day musician. But apart from that, quite a lot has changed for the British/Japanese duo. With their bastard ballads, this “no genre”-band has, yes!, invented a new genre. They themselves do not proclaim that and in all probability they don’t even know it, but it is a fact.
"Andrew Sharpley and Emiko Ota comprise the playpower duo of a&e and Oi!, their third album sits carefully on the fence separating the wilfully goofy from the strangely charming. Such genre-trashing voraciousness recalls Van Dyke's Parks's Discover America or Mike Cooper's aural travelogues. Like these artists, a&e play with the building blocks of nostalgic and winsome music with equal parts love, studiousness and irreverence." Jon Dale /The Wire

-	> a&e at myspace

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