LaRM day 103 (Deerhoof-De La Soul)

Experimental art-rock freakout merchants Deerhoof are something of an acquired taste, but I really like their daffy records. 2004's Milk Man is a great bit of lo-fi experimentation, all spazzed rhythms and tinny angular guitars. It's a spooky record, off-kilter and disorientating but it's also surprisingly melodic, with some great little pop hooks buried in amongst the freakiness. Eighth album Offend Maggie (2008) is even more conventional in its song structures (but that's not saying a great deal, it's still pretty much all over the place) and is a better album on the whole. It's a pretty charming affair with its scattershot approach to both style and rhythm being presented in a more restrained way than usual. There are references to all kinds of stuff, from folk to musique concrete and it's a broad canvas that the band use. It's a lovely record in many ways and it's surprising to find that besides being enjoyably unpredictable, it's also beautifully presented.

When I was a teenager doing my metal phase I loved Def Leppard. There's no explaining it beyond age. Listening to Vault: Greatest Hits 1980-1995 (1995) now I'm struck by various things (besides the fact that it's unbelievably shit, obviously). For a start the production on this stuff is immense, the drums are so deep that they're absolutely thunderous, it's utterly absurd. Everything is so incredibly clean and shiny and polished to the absolute max - this stuff is pristine. I guess it was all the rage for hair-metal to be recorded in this ridiculously clinical way, but the Leppard records pushed it to its limit. If memory serves this is partly because that dolt Mutt Lange was behind the desk. Anyway, the songs are appallingly bad of course, from 'Pour Some Sugar On Me' to 'Armaggedon It', it's all garbage. But the thing is, I can't possibly listen to anything from On Through the Night, High and Dry or Pyromania without loving it. Bloody teenage years have left me with a whole raft of terrible records that I really love. This means that listening to Vault evokes mixed emotions because one minute there's some tosh from a later album and I'm thinking "God this is awful", but the next there's 'Photograph' or 'Animal' and I'm thinking "God this is awful. It's brilliant'.

OK, so next up is something truly abysmal. I have my good friend Patrick to thank for the double CD compilation of the best of Holland's premier comedy rap act Def Rhymz which is called De Allergoeiste. There's one particular video that Def Rhymz made in which he's a security guard at a museum who can't stop some crazy kids having a party and so joins in and the sight of Def getting down a grandma is top quality stuff. Anyway, his dancehall-lite comedy hip hop is absolutely appalling and Def himself seems to represent a remarkably offensive stereotype of a leering, eye-rolling black man. I don't know if supposed to be highly ironic or something but it's utterly bizarre that this stuff exists. Still at least he's better than Holland's other top class rap act, the hugely inappropriately monikered Brainpower.

Death metal merchants Deicide have made a bunch of half decent thrash albums but they're all basically exactly the same so all anyone needs is the Best Of Deicide: 1990-2001 (2003). Twenty tracks of pummelling, blistering death metal which, bearing in mind they're American, is surprisingly good. The difficulty is the astonishing lack of variety, and as one song passes into the next you feel a bit like you're listening to a single 60-minute work. The whole record is a load of nonsense of course but that goes with the territory when you're talking about death metal (frontman Glen Benton has an upside-down cross literally branded on his forehead) so it's not really a problem. The thing is it's all pretty convincing and it's easy to be a bit lily-livered making these kind of records and Deicide go all out.

De La Soul's 3 Feet High and Rising (1989) really is a great album isn't it? It really is. Everybody loves it and with good reason - it's ace. Everybody knows it by heart so I'm not going to say anything else about it.