Bruce Haack - Haackula LP

$18.98

Our Review:

Wow. This is a real "believe it or not" release. Haackula lives up to its billing as a "lost classic of outsider electronica" for sure. The album is playful, perverse and perhaps more than a little bit paranoid. Bruce Haack unleashed his Moogs (and warped imagination) in his bedroom studio to create Haackula back in 1978, but it remained officially unreleased until now. Possibly because a large portion of Haack's discography consists of records for children, we were really surprised by the R-rated content of Haackula, including the resplendent moog-pop tune "Blow Job." Perhaps this is why it never saw the light of day in Haack's lifetime. Haack's synths and rhythm machines bleep and bloop, shuffle and shudder, conjuring an alternate universe of electronic computer funk wackier and weirder and way more off-kilter than anything Kraftwerk was up to at the time. The musical sense of childlike innocence with which Haack was so adept is still happening here. These tracks are as tuneful and catchy as ever, but his mystical ideas are joined by sexual themes. Where The Electric Lucifer was astrological, Haackula is scatological. Adult realities are confronting the outsider, making Haackula's haunted house electronics all the more eerie, while the bizzaro-factor (plus Haack's aforementioned songwriting skills) insure that it's all very entertaining, gleefully so.

And if Haackula itself wasn't cool enuff, there two equally mindblowing bonus tracks. First there's Bruce Haack's 1982 proto-hip-hop collaboration with Def Jam's Russell Simmons, an 8 minute track entitled "Party Machine" that features funky Herbie Hancock "rockit" style grooves and deep distorted vocals laying down such science as "Haack attack is back... Bruce Haack... Anti-wack." Damn!