Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on July 2012
[youtube]H55udygyKYk[/youtube]
Swiss-Japanese duo Tim and Puma Mimi are very much a 21st century creation: they first gained acclaim conducting Skype concerts where Mimi would appear on screen at a club in Europe where Tim was manipulating a battery of instruments ranging from laptop to flutes and even a musical cucumber.
But there’s plenty of time for good old-fashioned 20th-century elepop on their new album The Stone Collection Of. Opener “Acchi Kocchi” samples 8-bit Japanese group CMYK and the whole album is redolent of the clever yet guileless electronica of German legends Kraftwerk. Add to it Mimi’s sing-songy rapping about life in her 1DK apartment (“Surrealism”), Shinjuku station (“Shinjuku”), eggs (“Tamago”) and life’s highs and lows (“High 5 Low 5”), and you’ve got quite a charming disc.
Why does everything sound so bright and shiny? After years of long-distance love Tim and Mimi got married in 2011 and settled in Zurich, where they continue to make music—and collect stones.
