Mario sits on the porch of his desert retirement home. His trademark red overalls are  faded and ripped and his moustache has now grown into a full prophet’s beard. I sit next to him and watch the fat red pixel sun wobble as it approaches the two dimensional horizon. “You know man, I never looked back after I stopped chasing that damn princess and her fuckin’ coins. I can’t believe how much time I wasted doin’ that shit. And no-one told me. Koopa, Luigi…not none of them. ‘Course I got to thank one of them for slipping me that tab of peyote. My horizons never stopped broadening ‘cos of that. Even now I ain’t sure of nothing.”

As if to prove the point, out the front of his dilapidated cabin a cactus wobbles indignantly, and a line of coins race across the sky and disappear into a pipe that snatches them from the air, like a skybound clay crocodile. “So you’re happy now, Mario ? I mean things are pretty slow here in the retired computer game character reservation.” He scratches absent-mindedly at his potato-like nose and pulls a desert booger from one of his capacious nostrils. “Yeah. I mean… it was hard not being the main man anymore. But life here…I get all the perks and none of the hassle. Plus it’s not like I don’t deserve a rest you know ?” He cackles happily then reaches over to his record player.

The record he puts on is by Bunny and the Electric Horsemen and is called “Fall Apart In My Backyard”. It is only possible to understand what it is by listening to other albums on Bearsuit Records, a label that scurries away from cliché and stereotypes like silverfish from sunshine. Cheerful midi sounds chirp away in a soufflé of sun baked noir-esque guitar. Whimsical Japanese vocals insinuate themselves from echoing caverns that hide the Radiophonic Workshop’s pet cat and outside sounds become inside and what happens in your head doesn’t necessarily stay there.

Like the other albums I have heard on this label (Harold Nono / AWSTS) this is fucking brilliant. Baffling, surreal and totally idiosyncratic are just some of the frighteningly positive adjectives I could use to describe it and I have to admit I’m a little offended that you’re still sitting there like a lemon instead of following the link to go and buy it. What ? You like to know what you’re getting before blindly rushing into the Internet to buy albums ? Well then get the handy Bearsuit compilation album “Run Over By An Elevator”. Go on. Off you go.

http://bearsuitrecords.bandcamp.com/album/fall-apart-in-my-backyard

Kim Monaghan

About Kim Monaghan

Kim is reviews editor here at Sitting Now, Overlord at http://daddytank.co.uk, and member of the shadowy League of Cat Fanciers: Birmingham division.

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