Robert Christgau: Dean of American Rock Critics

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Utah Saints

  • Utah Saints [London, 1992] A-
  • Two [Nettwerk America, 2001] Dud

Consumer Guide Reviews:

Utah Saints [London, 1992]
The first single-artist techno album you can take home to your stereo swallows the Something Good EP and spits out the bones, cannibalizing it the way it cannibalizes everything else. Grounded in DJ Tim Garbutt's factitious funk and the low-register, high-energy synth blare of Belgian new beat, it marshals aural images of mass excitement--football match, soul concert, symphonic crescendo--into a bold-faced synthesis of two kinds of phony grandeur: disco's and arena-rock's. Its trance-dance strategy is to transform Philip Glass into a raver, the perfect pomo extension of techno's sometimes irritating, often hilarious fondness for the classical tradition. The most exciting thing to happen to Annie Lennox since childbirth. More fun than a batch file of monkeys. A-

Two [Nettwerk America, 2001] Dud

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