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Half tribute album, half collaborations, remixes, and mash ups, 1937 is by far one of the strangest albums I will hear this year.  My initial reaction to Soul Junk was "Nerd rock meets hip hop", and that opinion really hasn't changed much with this disc.  "Begollan Tempus," performed by Aelters, is primarily computer generated instrumentalism, while "poolfullofstatic" (Hairspray or No?) is a spoken word piece. "Organ Air" by Patagonian is a looped song that makes me resent the last five minutes of it.  There are several other examples here of the freak folk, lo fi, "I'm so indie you can't possibly get me" type of songs here, including appeareances by Drekka, Jason Talbot, Matt Davignon, and Stephen Ruiz.

The best of the lot is Poison Arrows' "Hornfront", a hip hop/noise piece, "Ungst Funk Slag Collision Remix" (Dev79), and "Wack MC", a remix of different Soul Junk version of the same song.  Other than these three, the album is an unmitigated mixture of indie kids with questionable talent who probably called in sick to Starbucks in order
to record their contributions.

Brian A. Smith
21 May 2005