Music Arcades: Mina: Kryptonite

I've never known much about this CD, but I've always liked it. Even web research is unrevealing. Last.fm says simply, "Mina was an instrumental post-disco band from Germany. They’ve had two albums released and a remix compilation before splitting up for good." Wikipedia has nothing at all. Allmusic.com has the egregious "Italian pop star Mina released Napoli on the Italian PDU label in late 1996, and Kryptonite in 1999."

This is Kryptonite, but it ain't no Italian pop star. Eight electro-instrumentals of varying lengths that sound variously like Chemical Brothers, like David Holmes, and has much of cheeky wit of the Sabres of Paradise. Bits of Sechs für's Parkett could be Stereolab, while parts of Kupferfarben could be Air. But most of all they remind me of the twitchy pop energy of the League of Gentlemen.

Sometimes sounding like other people is a bad sign. Derivative. Sometimes it's good; especially when there are plenty of references and they're all smart ones.

Tim gave me this. Thank you, Tim. Phoned him up late yesterday evening to say that and ended up hearing stories about Jerry Dammers' phone calls while I read him (Tim, not Jerry) this statement, talking about Fripp & Eno re-issues, Burial, and him telling me about lots of people I've never heard of: Junior Boys, Gas and Justice? Impressed, too, by how many details of this album he could remember, from describing the cover and the music to the label (Bungalow) and their logo.