Ratatat - Shiller

I remember one of my friends kind of being pissed off about Ratatat, calling them hacky, that they wouldn't be around in a year. Maybe he was just reacting to all the electronic acts that show up daily with their little gimmick, how easy it is to program a bunch of shit and stand at a laptop. I have to admit they had a great tag line that got me interested: Two guys with guitars and a drum machine and a shitload of effects. That was it... every synth sound started with the guitar, but they didn't completely lose everything that makes playing it live so great. I guess they were giving into this idea of the possibilities of the technology and finding new sounds, it has to be fun discovering what you can get out of a guitar pickup.
Every time I played that self titled album I was amazed, it stayed in this little CD player I had in the kitchen all summer. Straight through it was solid and just never left. Then another friend saw them live and described this entire light show, that went along with everything and then a remix album of all these hiphop tracks that they were kind of bootleg selling at their shows.
They were kind of going in all these directions and I still don't know that much about them really, the samples of guys talking about freestyling before seventeen, it just sounded completely new, and the fact they could recreate this live...it's amazing. Am I going to still be interested 4 albums later? I actually think so.

Available directly from Beggars Group USA, which only started recently distro-ing their own stuff directly...finally.

Ratatat - Shiller 7" (XL)
The A-side, "Shiller" is the lead track from the forthcoming Ratatat full-length, LP3 (July 8). Includes the non-album B-side "Mahalo."