Gooom seems, at first, like an elitist music nerd's wet dream: a tiny French label with a delightfully dorky name, almost no distribution, an eclectic and incestuous roster, and a brilliant design aesthetic that somehow manages to make using Helvetica everywhere seem bold and fresh all over again. In a musical landscape where artists keep locking themselves into ever tinier and more rigorously-defined subgenres, Gooom artists slew all over the map. You never know where they're going to go next.

If people know of Gooom at all, it's because of 2003's release by M83, Dead Cities, Red Seas, and Lost Ghosts. Over the last couple of years it's gotten a lot of word of mouth and some positive critical notice due to its fusion of laptop noise, pop hooks, and deep and abiding love of all things shoegazer. I liked that album a lot when I first got it, but it didn't wear well with me (especially after Pluramon's Dreams Top Rock came out and did the same thing better a couple months later). Late last year, though, I picked up a copy of Cyann & Ben's Happy Like An Autumn Tree, and its fusion of downer folk, krautrock, and glitchy goodness was much more compelling. It took me a while to notice that it too was a Gooom release, and after that I decided to pick up a few more releases on the label. Only a couple months later, I have many more of them and am trying to collect them all.

M83 has received the lions' share of the attention, but Gooom's other artists are equally deserving of praise. Abstrackt Keal Agram aim for a synth-heavy style of head-nodding indie hip-hop that owes a considerable debt to Anticon, but make side trips into indie rock and alt-country. Mils makes glitchy electronica that strays all over the post-techno landscape. Cyann & Ben make a prog-heavy style of electronic folk that owes as much to Dark Side Of The Moon-era Pink Floyd as it does Matmos. KG don't know whether they want to destroy their amps or the dancefloor first, and often try to do both with the same song, exploring some alternate universe of dance-punk that's way less self-serious and way more gleeful than the one we actually have. T.Raumschmiere wishes he were this much fun. Kids Indestructible do all the above at once. And then there's Purple Confusion, who are as close as Gooom get to a supergroup, and whose ambition far exceeds their grasp, but who make a party out of missing the mark.

The Gooom world in miniature can be found on the remix EP for M83's song “Run Into Flowers”. Besides featuring one of Justine Kurland's brilliant utopian photographs on the cover, it contains four interpretations of the title track which neatly display the breadth of Gooom's ambitions. Starting off the EP is M83's original version, which was the standout track from their last album. It's a gorgeous chunk of bright, analog synthesizer work that owes a heavy debt to My Bloody Valentine and Kompakt's lush post-techno. The Abstrackt Keal Agram remix transfigures the song into a piece of funky, head-nodding downtempo that manages to retain the feel of the original in a hip-hop framework. Jackson, who belongs on Gooom in spirit if not in reality (his near-perfect “Utopia” would not have been out of place on the essential label compilation Gooom Tracks Volume 2), turns in an abstracted, glitchy, and discofied version of the track that sounds as much like Metro Area as My Bloody Valentine. Of the four versions, it had the farthest to go to grow on me, but I really enjoy it now. Finally, KG thumps the unsuspecting listener upside the head with the shrieking maelstrom of their remix, which sounds like nothing so much as Medicine or Rollerskate Skinny in a wind tunnel. It's completely over the top, ridiculous and sublime all at once. All in under 20 minutes!

I'm still trying to absorb a massive amount of the label's output at once, so I'll have to wait to provide more substantive comments. But I think Gooom is something special: in a time when even (especially?) the best labels are known quantities, Gooom is joyfully anarchic. They're fun. Not everything they try works, but they keep you guessing, and I never feel like they're condescending to me or trying to act any cooler than they actually are. They're my new favorite label. I can't wait to see what they do next.

TrackBack

I must run across this entry every time I'm looking for something Gooom related on Google, Technorati, or wherever. So I thought I'd finally just drop note saying thanks for posting this. I realize that it is now a somewhat old entry, but maybe there is still a little Gooom love left in ya. I'm still a Gooom addict. I just wish their stuff was easier to get a hold of.

Posted by: DK on August 15, 2006 02:51 AM

If you are loving all things Gooom, check out the Dopplebanger mash-up album "Dark Side of the Gooom".

Posted by: DKL on April 7, 2007 09:56 AM

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