If the name sounds familiar, it’s because he’s half of Klasky Csupo Inc. Yeah, the animation team behind “Rugrats” — the cartoon cool enough to use the Devo guy’s theme music — is just one of the colorful pursuits of Gabor Csupo. He’s also quite the electronic experimentalist in his own right, both as a musician and as head of the Tone Casualties label (Controlled Bleeding, Holger Czukay).
Kalmopyrin is Csupo’s third album, and if you thought the Hungarian’s cartoons had a slightly subversive streak running through them, one listen to this should crystallize that theory. Working from a wide range of electronic influences — collage, breakbeat, ambient, whatever — “Kalmopyrin” evokes a “My Life In the Bush of Ghosts” feel with its disparate percussive flavorings and seemingly random sonics. As an album, it’s not entirely cohesive, but each track is rich with ideas.
This article appears in Dec 4-10, 2002.