Itch-E & Scratch-E - Itch-E Kitch-E Koo 2LP (30th Anniversary Edition)

Are you from a time and place where Itch-E & Scratch-E had some cultural impact? Being a 6 year old in Far North Queensland at the time of release I have a vague memory, this music was in the atmosphere of 1990s Australia. It felt weird and good to encounter it as a child.

Nostalgic aside, my most cynical and ignorant logic would lead me to assume that the commercial success of Andy Rantzen and Paul Mac’s dynamic duo would mean their vision of electronic music would be a watered down, for mass consumption, version of rave. WRONG, a proper engagement with ‘Itch-E Kitch-E Koo’ reveals a record that still sounds ambitious, experimental, artful and fun.

I’m hearing some of the most radical and weird music to puncture Australia’s youth music sector in my lifetime. A bit rich coming from a shop that’s proudly as guitar-ish as we are but it really makes the ‘alternative rock’ boom that’d come in its wake feel like a Britpop level cultural regression.

It’s hectic and utopian, dangerous and silly. Aria charts aside, it feels on the same team as Bloody Fist and Clan Analog, or internationally LFO and 808 State. Consider it the logical extension of techno-pop era Severed Heads. Essential electronic music! - Nic