Say what you like about Belgium's Scratch Pet Land, but they're original. They may not always be great, they may not always be enjoyable or even tolerable, but no one sounds like they do. Combining vintage noisemaking machines, computers, unusual percussion, and discarded toy instruments, Scratch Pet Land made an otherworldly and (at times) compelling racket on their debut full-length back in 2000. Influences were undetectable, instrumental sources puzzling. It sounded like nothing but Scratch Pet Land.

Now Laurent and Nicolas Baudoux have expanded the Scratch Pet Land project and given it a new name: the Fan Club Orchestra. In 1999, The Brothers Baudoux assembled ten friends and had them improvise on Game Boys, samplers, flutes, harmonicas, turntables, mouth harps, and god only knows what else, all under the direction of Laurent, who gave detailed instructions to the Orchestra via overhead projector. The resulting cacophony was then mixed down and edited. Believe it or not, there is now a Fan Club Orchestra Japan, started by an early participant in the Belgium chapter. He brought the communal noisemaking format back to his homeland, and FCOJ just might release a record of its own down the road.

To be completely honest, the most beautiful thing about the Fan Club Orchestra is the concept. There's a small black-and-white photograph of a recording session on the back cover of the record, and you can feel nothing but joy gazing at the dozen or so folks sitting on the floor with their guitars and electronic devices. The idea of a group of people, some of whom are non-musicians, coming together to get all drum-circle with their battery-powered gizmos seems like a total blast to me. It's the polar opposite of IDM's primary archetype: the pale, bald-headed shut-in sitting alone in front of a computer monitor.

The music, even though it doesn't come close to matching the greatness of the communal idea and sometimes strays into "more fun to make than listen to" territory, has enough weird and inspired moments to make the album worthwhile. But as with Scratch Pet Land, erecting signposts is difficult. The typical Fan Club Orchestra track is built around a three-chord vamp on some sort of cheap keyboard, with various instruments-- most of which have a timbre that could be best described as 'dinky'-- buzzing around this center. The Orchestra makes no attempt to hide the fact that close to half its members are making music on handheld gaming devices, instead using the toys to build a sweet, innocent and unpredictable world of sound. And while I've sometimes wondered about the authenticity of improvised laptop music, there's no question that these guys are making it up as they go along.

The softer, more focused tracks (none are titled), which retain a certain amount of musicality, are by far the most enjoyable. A couple of these even come close to building a groove, when the chord riffs and bits of percussion come together to create something that swings. And then there are a handful of tracks that just aren't fun to listen to, where all the tinny devices combine into a midrange-heavy roar. But most of the fourteen pieces fall somewhere in between, filled with odd textures and melodic bits that pop out momentarily only to disappear back into the chatter. You won't hear another record that sounds like this any time soon; then again, you probably don't need to.

-Mark Richardson, August 21st, 2002