FREQ MAGAZINE
Gabor Csupo "Liquid Fire"
Review by Richard Fontenoy
Gabor Csupo, cartoon magnate of this parish, here offers up a double CD of electronic tomfoolery. A double, I hear you say? (Well, actually, I don't, but I'll answer anyway). Remember the third season of Lexx, with the Fire Planet and the Ice Planet? It's kind of like that. Divided into Liquid and Fire, it spans pretty much every end of fucked ambience, from the Coilesque to the "like Enigma if they were better" folk-music sampling tracks like "Neenana Neenana Nina" or "Hungarian Dance #1 and #2" (though Enigma would never have had the balls to play the tricks with time signatures that the boy Csupo gets up to on the latter two.)
The track listing is a joy in itself- "The Dark Gloss In Her Teary Eyes" really should have been a Legendary Pink Dots title, and as for "Intergalactic Frog Wedding"- really, this is too eclectic to simplify, so a random selection of influences and impressions is gonna have to do (wanna see my Dick Emery? No, thought not). Eno, of course, is a big presence here (unsurprisingly, listed first on the sleeve notes' exhaustive list of influences), but the Eno of NerveNet and the like- this isn't really music for airports. Apart from anything else, all the water sounds on Disc One would have you busting for a piss for the duration of your journey, and "Thrombosis" really isn't something you want on a long-haul flight. Liquid is the more mellow of the two, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have its fair share of headfuck hecticity. Bruce Wagner (the same Brice Wagner, I think, who created the wonderful Wild Palms and wrote the criminally underrated novel Force Majeure) pops up once on each disc to throw in some very fucked, seedy Bukowski-meets-Chandler commentary.
Over on Fire, things are much more Electro, and slightly more abrasive, but still very spacey. Remember the "Robot" bit from Sven Vath's The Harlequin, The Robot And The Ballet Dancer? It's kind of like that, but with the Harlequin and the Ballet Dancer both also in evidence. The Lexx theme is possibly (though it's probably just me) continued by having a track called "Cluster Bimbo", all In Gorbachev We Trust-era Shamenesque Acid beats, with nice pulsing synths underneath and a cool line in speaker-swapping snare rolls.
Thirty-five tracks of what used to be called "Intelligent Techno" could, in the hands of many people, be overly long and get quite dull. But there's enough variation here to sustain your interest. And you just gotta love a track called "Bad Hair-day In Egypt", which for some reason puts me in mind of someone with a mullet breakdancing in the shadow of the Sphinx. Only in space. Many years back, someone told me they only liked Techno if it was "busy". I wasn't really sure what he meant, but this is fucking busy. There's always at least a godzillion different things going on, so one minute you're listening to the bass, the next you realise there's been quite a pleasant tune going on elsewhere,then suddenly out of nowhere a new sampled melody line will come in and kick you in the bollocks. But in a nice way. Oh yes. This is good. Hugely so.
ONLINE REVIEW
Gabor Csupo "Liquid Fire"
Who woulda thunk it? Cartoon mogul Gabor Csupo (of Klasky Csupo fame) is an electronic musician! I knew he liked the music, due to his launching of his own record label, Tone Casualties. And, he is actually good at it! Channeling the best stuff from Brian Eno, Frank Zappa and Barry Adamson, Csupo makes two disks worth of excellent weirdo electronics. Cartoon and computer bleeps and bloops are everywhere, along with a keen sense of landscape. The tracks alternately sweep along in lush orchestral soundscapes, or concentrate their power into 2-3 minutes of computerized music. Given this is a two album set, there is a big chance to mess this up. Fortunately, this never happens. This is a great disk for any serious or casual listener of electronic music. Final Grade: A
KJFC New Album Review
Gabor Csupo "Zombient Music"
The phantom of the opera has turned in his pipe organ for synthesizers and a Macintosh. This is a disturbing chandelier, shrouded in cobwebs, home to bats and centipedes, struck by lightning and boomerangs. The last track is a monster featuring the distorted poetry of "Zoltar".
GABOR CSUPO ZOMBIENT MUSIC
BLUE DIVIDE MAGAZINE
Review by Kiran Aditham
Sparse signals from analog alleyways, distant drums and sinister strings come together to paint a portrait of an abandoned landscape. Zombient Music is comprised of 11 bizarre instrumental lessons in lo-fi horror music. At times, the record sounds like zombies are toying with the instruments themselves. Off-time drums and eerie bass underie the moans and groans from a close location, slowly creeping up into xylophone noise in "Victim Mary". This record, in ways, reminds me of just how dark dark ambient music can get. Csupo takes the listener to the toxic-waste site where the zombies arise and leaves them for dead.
Dead Voices on Air mixed with a Goblin score can be the best way to detail many of the noises erupting from the record. All in all, Zombient Music is not a bad effort. One has to be in the specific mood to give it a spin, but after a few listens, I wouldn't be surprised if this music really could wake the dead.
LEGENDS ONLINE MAGAZINE
Review by Zubrovka
I'm hallucinating. Csupo, gawd almighty, has sliced open my brain and stolen my acidic memories, only to pump them back at me through my speakers! And then there was realization, the lucid and the sublime...
Fire
Fast moving into the electronic arena, almost in syncopation, framing carefree vocals and the synths burn you till the bottoms drops out and the slow trip begins. Strings, subtle into heaviness, as the beat rises and drops and rises and drops. A world market of voices and sounds.
Luxury synths and the trance beat, trance talk, bending me, you can bend your brain can't you? I feel it bending in its cavity, bending and squeezing the sound information, urgently trying to decipher.
The bass comes on you hard and fast, the rhetoric lyrics and then back to the mind squeeze...feel the heat? It surrounds me and I want to move, increase it. Glimpse the costumed people, sweet and saturated in the flames of thought.
I am not fooled by this, I know the electronics is contrived trance, but no, it's bent correctly and I see bits of brain matter dripping out of my ear, flaming to the floor, there goes that exotic melody again, feel like a spice trader crawling through the ether of now. Ahhhh she's beautiful and wicked, scarves flying, spinning in a dizzy circle.
Liquid
Submerge, feel the bubbles cool my skin. I've craved this before, this cool sin, listen to her. The emotions flow. The trance is back, it's cooler, it's feminine. This where the colours get vivid, right here and they no longer burn. Throw out the Kitaro, the Tangerine Dream, the Jean Michel Jarre. Gabor Csupo just stole the show. Literally, my cup runneth over! "I love it, beautiful..."
35 tracks on 2 CD's. Fire will burn your passions, stir your emotions, 19 tracks of mind bending erotica blended brain. Liquid comes back to console you, 16 tracks bring you back from the heat, cool you down and transmute your mind into a shock studio of cool colours.
Anyone for the dust of my brain?
COOL AND STRANGE MUSIC MAGAZINE
Review by Wilhelm Murg
Gabor Csupo is a co-owner of Klasky Csupo, Inc, the animation studio that gave us Rugrats, Duckman and The Simpsons. After collaborating with Frank Zappa on various projects, Csupo began his own CD company, Tone Casualties. The label has become well known for releasing challenging, yet accessible experimental music by such underground royalty as Can's Holger Czukay, The Wipeouters (a.k.a. Devo), Skinny Puppy and Download's cEvin Key, all of who seem to be an influence on Csupo's work.
Liquid Fire is a 2-CD set that seems more like a beat manifesto disguised as an album. The musical styles mix minimalism, musique concrete, industrial, dance, world beat, classical, free jazz, ambient, and hip hop in an epic journey of cross-genre moods.
Liquid Fire is not trying to be profound; it is post-modern mood music for the thinking man; wallpaper with a beat.
BARCODE ONLINE MAGAZINE
(excerpt)
Bit of a mammoth trek here as Hungarian born, Gabor Csupo treats us to a 35 track double CD of leftfield, exotic electronic music. He also owns the very label that this is released on, which is always a bonus when you wish to release an album I think. The first impression you get from listening to Liquid Fire is that it is the work of a man whose head is literally exploding with musical ideas. But this is not surprising upon reading the huge list of names that have influenced him into recording this album, Eno, Zappa, Bjork, Sylvian, Torn, Frissell, Hassell, Brook, Reznor, Cave, Aphex Twin, Skinny Puppy to name but a few, all the greats and from every genre you can imagine. You would therefore expect Liquid Fire to be a bubblebath of experimentalism, jumping from one genre to another at alarming regularity, and it almost is. Split into two, Disc One entitled 'Liquid', Disc Two ' Fire', Csupo primarily treats us to a middle-eastern blend of sharp, imaginitive electronics interspersed with spoken-word passages. Some of the tracks are laid bare to a break-beat background yet there often remains a slightly outdated after taste about this fusion of avant-garde sensibilities. One minute cutting edge, the next dragged back to the dark ages with corny fuzzy electric guitars and various other Zappatronics. However, like his hero Zappa, what is not lost is a sense of humour, as title tracks such as 'Anal Sorrow', 'Rainforest Prostitute' and 'Cluster Bimbo' clearly indicate throughout.
OUTBURN MAGAZINE
Review by David Slatton
SURREAL TECHNO VOYAGE: Hungarian born Gabor Csupo is perhaps better known as a television producer for animated hits like (my favorite) The Simpsons and Rugrats than as a talented musician and founder of Tone Casualties, one of the few music labels producing experimental electronic music these days. But this double disc set showcases Csupo's brilliant knack for songwriting and sound production. Borrowing from styles as diverse as Zappa and Can to old school Detroit techno, Csupo takes a surreal and sometimes eerie voyage through techno's space-time continuum. The first disc, Liquid, starts off mellow and lighthearted with tracks like the funky "Frozen Princess of the Shallow Meadows" and the trippy drum & bass of "The Dark Gloss In Her Teary Eyes". Csupo also incorporates many ethnic, especially Eastern European, elements like the lilting, prayer-like vocals of Klara Zelity on "Folk Song In A Bottle". The second disc, Fire, launches into more aggressive and somewhat sinister themes like the hip-hop influenced "Big Brother Is Watching You" and the beat poetry of "Chromo-Zone" where Henry Chinasky rants the rebellious words of Charles Bukowski. A strange, mind bending trip through every electronic music genre imaginable led by the deft touch of one of electronica's elder statesmen.
GROOVES MAGAZINE
Issue Number 6
By the time the second number 'Neenana Neenana Nina" strikes its first beat, it is quite obvious that Csupo has strayed from the film score affectations of his previous Zombient Music release. Armed with a page-long sheet of influences, including Bjork, Eno and Skinny Puppy, Csupo had plenty of borrowed inspiration this time around. Blending traditional Hungarian music samples, wispy strings, and new-wave percussion while wandering aimlessly through various styles of rhythm, Liquid Fire is separated into two distinctive discs - "Liquid" and "Fire".
With the track titles matching the theme of either disc, it's easy to see that "Fire" carries more aggression and ominous songwriting than "Liquid". But despite its more subtle tendencies, the first disc carries more weight in terms of meticulously crafted melodies. With cinematic scores still seeping through the fiddling of styles, including a dramatic "Tragic Flight of the Beekeeper" and the fried trip-hop of "Frozen Princess of the Shallow Meadows", "Liquid" showcases a bit more instrumentation and creativity than the dark dance of "Fire".
MARGEN MAGAZINE
#23, Verano/Otoño 2001
Review by Carlos Jáuregui
No es habitual que un personaje famoso en Hollywood aparezca en nuestras páginas, pero el caso del húngaro Gabor Csupo es muy especial, porque además de ser uno de los productores de series de animación más importantes del mundo, tras haber producido trabajos como The Rugrats o, sin ir más lejos, las primeras temporadas de The Simpsons, tiene una pasión secreta en la música de vanguardia, lo que le animó a crear el sello Tone Casualties y el subsello Casual Tonalities como una división de la Klasky Csupo Inc. que tiene su sede en Sunset Boulevard.
Además de pasional aficionado, Csupo ha cultivado siempre su faceta como compositor y ya nos puso sobreaviso con su previo Zombient Music, un magnifico álbum repleto de extrañas maniobras electrónicas que ahora se contextualizan y expanden en una obra maestra de título tan contradictorio como el contenidoque oculta, Liquid Fire. Si bien la lista de grandes músicos a los que Mr. Csupo agradece la inspiración es enorme e incluye desde Zappa a Eno pasando por King Crimson, Holger Czukay, Bartok o Steve Reich, no es menor la avalanchia de referencias musicales que se agolpan en este álbum doble, verdadero crisol de imaginación desbordante y homogeneidad estructural. Al igual que un capítulo de los Simpsons, cuyo hilo argumental es una sucesión de gags e historias paralelas que acaban confluyendo de modo asombroso, la música de Csupo es un maravilloso viaje a ninguna parte, un continuo movimiento por diferentes estilos y culturas musicales que giran a tu alrededor dejando en el camino retazos musicales de todo tipo que el oyente no puede asimilar si no en sucesivas escuchas.
Desde Kraftwerk hasta Marta Sebéstyen, desde Crimson a Chemical Brothers y desde Gabor hasta Csupo... Una absoluta obra maestra, repetimos.
KORTEX ELECTRONICA
Review by Yanik Trudeau
To read the French version of this review, click here
Gabor Csupo is not only the founder of the Tone Casualties label, he is also one of the responsible parties for the production of animated series such as The Simpsons, Duckman and Rugrats. Although its music has nothing to do with these shows, it brings, like them to animation, a certain fresh air to the American label. Lively and amusing at all levels, Liquid Fire both brings the listener to a particular world and also relentlessly imposes various musical juggling acts through the handling of sounds which are often charmingly bizarre. To exactly define Liquid Fire would be almost a miracle, this is why the term “electronica” applies well to this Eastern-European mix of trip-ethnic-dub-electro-hip music. The first Cd is inspired directly by the atmospheric tendency of recent Tone Casualties publications, and contains rather calm songs with some discrete voices or with spoken text. The second disc is more alive and offers a rhythmic and energetic electronic blend. There’s a somewhat dark ambience—which is far from crushing—and which is often presented with a certain sense of humor, a rather refreshing thing for this kind of music. Liquid Fire is definitively one of the best Cds published recently by the Californian label, and it’s definitely worth a listen.
BARCODE ONLINE MAGAZINE
Bit of a mammoth trek here as Hungarian born, Gabor Csupo treats us to a 35 track double CD of leftfield, exotic electronic music. He also owns the very label that this is released on, which is always a bonus when you wish to release an album I think. The first impression you get from listening to Liquid Fire is that it is the work of a man whose head is literally exploding with musical ideas. But this is not surprising upon reading the huge list of names that have influenced him into recording this album, Eno, Zappa, Bjork, Sylvian, Torn, Frissell, Hassell, Brook, Reznor, Cave, Aphex Twin, Skinny Puppy to name but a few, all the greats and from every genre you can imagine. You would therefore expect Liquid Fire to be a bubblebath of experimentalism, jumping from one genre to another at alarming regularity, and it almost is. Split into two, Disc One entitled 'Liquid', Disc Two ' Fire', Csupo primarily treats us to a middle-eastern blend of sharp, imaginitive electronics interspersed with spoken-word passages.
TOXIC FLYER FANZINE
Composer Gabor Csupo will take you on a electronica joy ride with a sound that have a strong UK feel. Gabor Csupo mix's samples, industrial music to rap, trip hop, acid house, electronic music as well as various beats added to spoken words and poetry.
ALL MUSIC GUIDE
Review by Rick Anderson
If you've got kids who watch TV, chances are pretty good that the Hungarian-born electronica artist Gabor Csupo is already a part of your life. You may never have heard his music, but you've probably seen an episode or two of the Rugrats TV show, Duckman, or one of the early episodes of The Simpsons, all of which were produced by Csupo's animation studio, Klasky Csupo. The music he makes on his own --- a curiously compelling mix of musique concrete, trip hop, ambient experimentalism, and electronica --- isn't kid stuff; it's generally dark and sometimes scary, though not without humor. On this two-disc set he wanders all over the place, setting nonsense poetry to a bleepy electronic backdrop (Duna), juxtaposing a funky breakbeat with sounds of waterpots and a "Bootsy Collins"-ish bassline (Horace's Octopus), or combining what sounds like machine beat and what sounds like a woman's voice saying "Is it skinny?". Best of all, he takes several recordings of classical Hungarian dances by the venerable Capella Savaria and layers them with electronic percussion. Highly reccomended to the musically adventurous.
TOXIC FLYER FANZINE
Review by BW
Well composer Gabor Csupo will take you on an electronica joy ride with a sound that has a strong UK feel. Gabor Csupo's mixes samples, industrial music to rap, trip hop, acid house, electronic music as well as various beats added to spoken words and poetry. Fans of Frank Zappa, Laurie Anderson, Sneaker Pimps, Kraftwerk, Tricky.
