CRYPTACIZE / WHY?

I'm pretty unfamiliar with Steely Dan except those random huge hits, but after going through a bunch of youtube stuff and finding this original song Peg that Cryptacize covers, maybe this was obvious to everyone else, but Ween has to have been hugely influenced by them. Every time I hear some horrific music at the deli I just imagine it's the new ween single and it's good all of a sudden, that's all I could think of when hearing the original. The idea of these huge epic-ly recorded complicated numbers with a million session musicians and weeks of tweeking in a thousand dollar and hour studio...just complete excess, that dream of working with anything on the planet. It's kind of perfect they get a similar feeling with next to nothing instrumentation here. The rest of their stuff sounds pretty minimal as well....I couldn't find the Dylan Why? cover anywhere and I'd pick it up just to hear that. I got an EP of his a while back and it was just plain weird, sounds, changes all over the place, but really catchy, full of insane lyrics...a cure cover on his myspace is completely unrecognizable. Good stuff.

CRYPTACIZE / WHY?-Unusual Animals Vol. 4 7" (Asthmatic Kitty/AKR406) $4.50 “On this fourth volume of the Unusual Animals split vinyl releases we find a larger-than-life classic of the Disco era shrunken down to miniature size by the Bay Area's premier paranormalists, Cryptacize. Whereas the studio magic of Steely Dan can only be attributed to millions of dollars in major corporate backing, Cryptacize pulls it off with just a couple of claves, an autoharp, and a fuzz-pedal, arranged and recorded by Cryptacize with help from up-and-comer Dominique Leone. On the B side, Cryptacize's Bay Area neighbors WHY? (Anticon) reinterpret Dylan into a bass driven mystery night train anthem for reflection and cruising. The Unusual Animals Vinyl Series pairs Asthmatic Kitty roster artists with friends and sometimes-unlikely bedfellows. Each record includes a beautiful rendering of one of Mother Nature's stranger inhabitants by illustrator Jared Chapman.”