J*STARS - Put Me On A Planet

by Karmel Mandrick

A sound as inane as road workers drilling outside your bedroom on a Monday morning

""As a musical effort, this duo have come up with little more than a series of button pushing, banging bin lids and recording young boys sporadically shooting laser guns to the sound of Super Mario Bros.""

J*STARS have efficiently accomplished the task of making their LP ‘Put Me On A Planet’ incredibly tasking to review, in that track by track, there’s really not much to say about it. So in this lies the challenge of writing something of any interest about a two-piece who’ve created a sound as inane as road workers drilling outside your bedroom on a Monday morning. To put it one way, if this album were to soundtrack to a night out, it’d be to an empty club in Dudley shuffling along to a string of innocuous tunes that even after 100 listens no one recognises.

Their opener, ‘Ickey Plush’ sounds like a DIY version of Basement Jaxx sans the lyrics or any of the charm and unfortunately steers (repeatedly) into a brick wall from here onwards. J*STARS musical efforts are entirely instrumental which they can’t afford to be as they’ve failed to produce one song remotely strong enough to stand on its own, without the inclusion of a vocal to at least distinguish one track from the next. If we’re being generous, we’d consider sticking tenth track ‘Cassidian Beast’ on one of those “chill-out” compilations where airplay is reserved solely for trendy minimalist bars and bath times. But we might be pushing it even then.

Rather than titles such as ‘That Hefty Track’, J*STARS should have adopted more fitting names for their creations, for example: ‘That One With A Bit Of Piano’, ‘That One That Sounds A Bit Like Eighties Elevator Muzak’, ‘That One Where You’ve Already Stopped Listening So Isn’t Worth Bothering To Give A Title’ and so on and so forth. As a musical effort, this duo have come up with little more than a series of button pushing, banging bin lids and recording young boys sporadically shooting laser guns to the sound of Super Mario Bros.

There’s a saving grace in last track ‘Loose Nuke Threat’ which could be used as the theme tune to a new cartoon about a 30-something year old guy without a care in the world. But would you watch it? Nah, neither would we. 

J*STARS aim for the stars, looking to nail a mix of innovative, genre-bending dance tunes achieved by the Daft Punk’s and VHS Or Beta’s of this world but instead plummet back down to Earth into the middle of the Pacific never to be heard from again. Probably for the best - sorry.

daveStaar said on June 12th 2007 [report abuse]

Thanks for writing about something not worthy to write about with such enthusiasm. Cassidian Beast (that one with the squiggly synth melody) - c'mon - its annoying in a good way...

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