Send "Boom Bip " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Bbc |
 For the critic, Bryan ‘Boom Bip’ Hollon is at once exhilarating and exasperating – exhilarating in his straddling and meddling of a range of styles, exasperating in that he plays havoc with any attempt to contain or define him with overarching statements as to what he's about. John Peel dubbed him a "modern day Captain Beefheart", which might well have seemed appropriate at that point in his strategically haphazard career. He's collaborated with rapper Doseone, worked in electronica and hip hop, but achieved his highest accolades for Neon Neon, a joint-venture with Super Furry Animal Gruff Rhys – the inspired, 80s-style power pop of their album Stainless Style earned the pair a Mercury Prize nomination.Zig Zaj is predictably unpredictable, something else again for the artist. Featuring a host of collaborators including Bon Iver, Luke Steele, Money Mark and new permanent Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist Josh Klinghoffer, it's the sort of album that makes you realise that, texturally, these are the richest pop times of all. These tracks are soaked and refracted in a whole gamut of old styles and modern inflections, from glam to post-rock, from electro-pop to electronica. Opener All Hands heads the procession of what’s to come, with its ritualistic percussion and what sound like the chants of garlanded island women. Goodbye Lovers and Friends, featuring Franz Ferdinand’s Alex Kapranos, comes down from on high, as if pouring guitar scorn on the orthodoxies of landfill indie. This is how things could be done. Pele, with its robo-nova rhythms, is initially reminiscent of the late Serbian-Brazilian DJ/musician Suba, but soon mutates into a B52’s-style beehive wig-out....full text |
| Theskinny |
| In recent years, producer Bryan 'Boom Bip' Hollon has shown a desire to connect the dots between his electro-purist roots and the hippest realms of the indie-sphere, most notably with Neon Neon, the collaborative project between Hollon and Super Furry Animals leader Gruff Rhys. By comparison Zig Zaj is a much more understated affair, with guests tailored to suit the more brooding nature of the music: Franz Ferdinand frontman Alex Kapranos gives a notable, uncharacteristically dark vocal performance on Goodbye Lovers and Friends. The lengthier instrumental sections reveal blissful elements of krautrock and drone (see Pele and Reveal), showing that Hollon's palette is certainly expanding, but his insistence on pushing conventional live drumming to the fore doesn't always work. Whereas Neon Neon's Stainless Style took its influences and ran with them in an over-the-top way, Zig Zaj doesn't break out enough. It's the more experimental moments here that hint at something greater. [Ross Watson]...full text |
| Pitchfork |
| It's easy to picture Bryan Hollon casting a few interested glances at Ford & Lopatin earlier this year, particularly when the duo gained acclaim for embellishing their work with overt 1980s pop references on Channel Pressure. Hollon, better known by the Boom Bip moniker he's recorded under for more than a decade, had already covered vastly territory in 2008 through his Neon Neon project with Super Furry Animals singer Gruff Rhys. But his work there and as Boom Bip has been characterized by a restless desire to keep his sound in flux, to constantly seek out fresh collaborators and remixers, to help pull away from any set patterns he may be settling into. Even Neon Neon, which bustled with future potential, quickly went quiet after Stainless Style was released. Hollon's work as Boom Bip has also fallen into protracted periods of silence-- this is the first full-length release under that name since the 2005 album Blue Eyed in the Red Room. The fastidious arrangements that proliferate throughout Zig Zaj suggest he's spent much of that time laboring over these tunes, getting everything just right and slotting new collaborators into the fold. Hollon is primarily a producer of instrumental electronic works that grab from a range of disparate influences in that field. But he's also well known for the collaborators he brings into the fold. Rhys and Nina Nastasia featured on Blue Eyed; Alex Kapranos, Money Mark, and Josh Klinghoffer from the Red Hot Chili Peppers all worked on Zig Zaj. This one lacks a cohesive narrative in the same way that last Boom Bip full-length release did-- that's to be expected from an album with such a diverse crew on board. It's a world that takes some adjusting to, especially when you get a great lurch from the Grizzly Bear-like, chain-gang grind of "All Hands" to the broody noir-esque pop moves of the Kapranos-fronted "Goodbye Lovers and Friends". In fact, casual listeners could be forgiven for thinking they had stumbled onto an outright indie rock record at certain points, especially after a cursory listen to the verse-chorus-verse structure (complete with grinding guitars) of the latter song. On "New Order" Klinghoffer and Empire of the Sun vocalist Luke Steele garishly clash to push the Boom Bip sound closer to the kind of pop-metal-techno hybrid the Prodigy were practicing in their heyday....full text |
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