Cibo Matto
You’d almost expect the flat bellies of Cibo Matto’s Yuka Honda and Miho Hatori to be swollen with food considering the gastronomic celebrations that fill their debut, Viva! la Woman. The group–whose name is a loose Italian translation of “crazy food” and whose songs have titles like “Apple,” “Sugar Water,” “Artichoke,” and “Know Your Chicken”–was, according to the liner notes, “conceived over the dinner table.” But the duo’s hearty appetite for comestibles is merely symptomatic of their more general hunger for the spice of life: variety. Born and raised in Japan, living in New York City, singing in broken English, and naming themselves in Italian, Cibo Matto in a way brilliantly symbolize the melting pot of the East Village. But their cultural hodgepodge is perhaps best reflected in the way they cross-pollinate musical genres.
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Loosely appropriating the rudiments of hip-hop–Honda provides a lush sample-derived soundscape while Hatori sings, screams, raps, and whispers–the duo upend vaguely similar approaches developed by pals like Soul Coughing and the Beastie Boys and nonchalantly provide the logical extreme of postmod synthesis. Cibo Matto have concocted a universal stew from the loads of ingredients that can be found in New York, incorporating ambient city sounds, like beats emanating from a passing car. Masterfully produced by Mitchell Froom, Viva! la Woman ladles gobs of ethnic samples over phat beats–not necessarily of the B-girl variety, but succulent grooves nonetheless, which casually spice up the rhythms with dashes of Indian tablas, Latin American congas, and Caribbean steel drums. Honda doesn’t merely reconfigure preexisting chunks of music to form sonic skeletons; her multilayering delivers a near-orchestral sweep that juxtaposes all kinds of seemingly incongruous elements. On “White Pepper Ice Cream,” which transports Portishead’s “Sour Times” out of the cinema and onto a city block, Honda constructs a stunning evocation of a lonely summer evening in New York City as heard from a fire escape. Cars and subway trains pass, thunder crashes, and from across the alley a trumpeter practices (marvelously portrayed by top-notch jazzer Dave Douglas). If not for Hatori’s enigmatic polemics–“White pepper ice cream / Sweet or spicy? / White pepper ice cream / Which is the first word?”–it could be an alternate sound track for Rear Window.
I eat petals myself one by one
I will lose my lips
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo / Dave Aron.
