Review: Mucho Tapioca - Mucho Tapioca (2013)

Artist: Mucho Tapioca
Album: Mucho Tapioca
Year: 2013
Label: Self released

Review: Diego Camargo

Rate: 

Thoughts: In the last few months I’ve received several albums from France and some of them such as Jack Dupon, Rhùn and Mucho Tapioca were in the Avant Prog style.

Mucho Tapioca is formed by Jean-Charles Mouchet (guitars), Thomas Tallon (drums), Olivier Gaillan (vocals), Pierre Cardeillac (guitars), Quentin Buffier (electric double bass) and Julien Gefflet (xylophone and keyboards) but I had to do some research on the internet to find about who plays what, cause no info concerning that was given in their booklet or their Bandcamp/Facebook pages.

Their debut album (actually an EP with 30 minutes) is a delicious piece of craziness!

Mucho Tapioca (2013) was released in April and it comes beautifully packed in a digipack that imitates a can/box of Tapioca (the food). Also, the booklet brings us a comic book story (in French). You can find two stories in the booklets, "Scrabble Au Coin Du Feu Chez Baba Yaga" or the "La Venganza" (my case) with artwork done by Matthieu Andro.

It’s pretty hard to describe Mucho Tapioca’s music. Their songs are short, direct, fast, crazy and completely… abnormal.

‘Parano Yack’ and ‘Cherche Le Fusil !’ are fast, full of changes and with comic kind of vocals (which fits their booklet story).
‘Scrabble Au Coin Du Feu’ is more moderate in tempo with many vocals and again, many changes towards the end of it.
‘Soirée Diapos’ is another punch in the face with crazy tempo beats and many screaming voices.

‘Malhabile Lama’ is Post Metal, but also Jazz  with the electric double-bass, as always, and of course by now you already know…. screams. In fact, the screaming is part of their sound and it’s one of the band’s particularities.
‘La Venganza’ pretty much follows the steps of the previous track.
‘Chez Baba Yaga’ has whispering vocals and it made me think of System Of A Down instantaneously. Probably an influence on the band’s music (and it should be anyway, a great band).

Closing Mucho Tapioca's debut album we have ‘Méchant Chameau’. A more Space/Prog track. A small trip to the band’s musical universe and a fitting ending to the album. If not for the fact that…

… we still have a less than one minute unnamed track on the CD with crazy mouth sounds. Now yes, we have a fitting ending for a crazy record!

I’ve found myself having some trouble in putting Mucho Tapioca’s music into words.
Eight songs, around 30 minutes of music and with the exception of one song all of them are up to 4 minutes long.

Sometimes this band delivers everything they’ve got in just one minute of one of their songs. There’s so much going on all the time that it is like being in a psychiatric music hospital!
And exactly because of that they are so interesting and unique. And that’s why you should definitely check them!

The band was included in our Podcast #26 and you can listen the track 'Parano Yack' HERE.