Move D - Namlook VII: Home Shopping

Pete Namlook is sitting back on his talents for this uninspired co-release with David Moufang (aka Move D). For someone with such a workload (well over 100 albums to his credit) and his own label to distribute it, one would think he must have an awful lot to say. Unfortunately, Home Shopping says little more than "here's another product." "Bad Hair Day" rehashes clicks and beats alongside a melodic, one-handed keyboard jam, and "Nanotube" spoons out lazy spaceship jazz fumblings onto a plate of daydream grooves. "Flexdollars" marries ominous Edgar Froese synth pulses and linear drum machine crispness in 4/4 time, delivering a futuristic skyline at night that doesn't do much but hint at the regular neon buzz of activity. Next, with "Arm Candy," some Rasta windup robot rhythms and a handful of ambient window dressing hang in suspended animation — a sort of limbo that dissolves in the ears like cotton candy when it ends. "Mouse Potatoes" hopscotches across the circuit boards toward a rather playful and multicolored basket of synthesizer pasta that goes from nursery-rhyme naïve to autobahn cruise control around the eight-minute mark. Lastly, "Detox" is something of a soundtrack-style piano ballad from the '80s, cluttered with some tired percussive stray bullets booming around in the distance. Challenging in its mediocrity, Namlook has done so much better elsewhere. The production value is good as usual, but it doesn't make the CD better in the process. Perhaps restraining some impulses and putting out an album every six months would yield sweeter fruit. As it is, Home Shopping looks better on the rack than when you actually put it on.