![[tipsy]](tipsy.gif)
Tipsy
Trip Tease
Asphodel (CD/Double-Vinyl)
Prepare to be entranced.
Whether you've only vaguely noticed the Rebirth of the Lounge Nation over the last few years or thrown yourself into it with the force of a tropical storm, Trip Tease will get you grooving. As kitschily soothing as Martin Denny, as out-there as Esquivel, Tipsy fits seamlessly into the ouvre of space-age bachelor pad music, dishing out wacky fun like "Grossenhosen" hand in hand with you-there-boy-fetch-me-another-one-of-these-umbrella-drinks numbers like "El Bombo Atomico". It's so authentic, so faithful to the sound that spawned it, that only the cover art and ex-post-facto self-referentialism will twig newbies to the fact that this is new music.
Of course, the behind the scenes story is even groovier.
Tim Digulla and David Gardner, the gents behind Trip Tease, originally assembled these tracks entirely from samples of albums by space-age bachelor pad luminaries (Lyman, Esquivel, Denny, etc.). As you might guess, this proved to be a licensing nightmare. Rather than deal with it, they opted to reconstruct the samples with the aid of studio musicians and then "rebuild" the album with the new samples. Pretty amazing (and I'd kill to hear the original tape).
As a result, the world has been blessed with wonders like "Mr Excitement", "Nude on the Moon" and "Cinnabar", exotica a la "Fuad Ramses" and "Something Tropical" and the solid-state tranciness of "Zenith". It's an amazing, delightfully retro listening experience that I urge you to try, soon. Dim the lights, chill the martinis and quietly press the repeat button on the CD player. You'll want to hear this one again and again... -- george zahora