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Quintron
UNMASKED ORGAN LIGHT YEAR OF INFINITY MAN
(BULB)

Stars graphics

At long last, the impossibly odd New Orleans–based organ dynamo and erstwhile inventor Mr. Quintron has turned out the booty-shaking dance album he was born to make. It’s a trip through New Orleans’s multiple-personality pasts and presents, from Ernie K-Doe to Manny Fresh. Ensconced in his own private club, the Spellacaster Lounge, in New Orleans’s Ninth Ward, Quintron has spewed out a stream of (be)low-fi releases that have attested to his affinity for malfunctioning drum machines, pre-transistor electric gadgetry, medicine-show novelty hokum, and avant-garde noise; his creative leap here is in realizing that N’Awlins’s native brand of hip-hop (in his phrase, the "No Money Cash Limit" posse) is built on pretty much the same mix.

"Mysterious Rangers" is ostensibly an attempt at a New Orleans bounce track — it even quotes Juvenile’s "Back That Azz Up" — but it’s rendered, as is most of the album, with little more than some choppy funeral-organ chords and a homemade beatbox that Quintron has dubbed the "Drum Buddy." "White Man Style" imagines Hasil Adkins–style psychobilly primitivism with pretty much the same tools; the six-minute "Hurricane" vamps underneath a "Bigfoot’s coming!" chant that’s augmented by the mousy back-up cheerleading by long-time partner Ms. Kitten. "GQ21" is an attempt at a freestyle cut by a posse of one that only Jon Spencer could love; "9-4-9" begins like an obligatory area-code-pride shout-out but is quickly revealed to be an excuse to count backward from almost 1000 while pretending to be Prince. The quintessential New Orleans soul cut "Certain Girl" (written by Allan Toussaint, for Ernie K-Doe, under the pen name Naomi Neville!) gets a faux Latin instrumental workout on a deliriously cheesy Hammond Sounder organ. And as the disc stutters and flails to a heroically spazoid conclusion, Quintron’s version of Lesley Gore’s "You Don’t Own Me" steals the vampire-waltz chords from Screamin’ Jay’s "I Put a Spell on You." The spellcaster has spoken.

(Quintron and Ms. Pussycat play the Milky Way Lounge and Lanes this Friday, June 7. Call 617-524-3740.)

BY CARLY CARIOLI

Issue Date: June 6 - 13, 2002
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