imagineiam is one of the many groups fronted by Bad Chad of Bad Chad & The Good Girls.
Label: Hand on the Plow
Artist: imagineIAM
Title: Merry Go Round
Cat. No.: HOTP008
Format: 12” Vinyl + Digital, 4 track
Genre: Post Punk / No Wave / Electronic
Release Date: 5th December 2008
Contact: email: info@handontheplow.org
web: http://www.handontheplow.org
Dist: John +44 (0)161 236 3351
HAND ON THE PLOW ARE PROUD TO PRESENT... THE NEW WORLD
CELEBRATION OF WIRED LOUISIANA HYPNO-FUNK SENSATION imagineIAM
The Hand On The Plow crew – Laszlo Beckett, Steve Taylor and Matt Spandex – have
always been free and easy with the sounds and styles they adopt into their tracks, but this has
never meant that they are self-conscious “fusion” merchants. Where blues and Afro-funk
motifs, Dada lyrics, Liquid Liquid percussive work-outs or Herbert-style domestic objectsampling
appear, they are never clever references or nods to currently-hip styles: they are
there because they work in the track and only because of that. Theirs is "experimental" music
only in that they experiment constantly in search of the perfect groove, the sort of groove that
can only come from years of immersion in the truest of true-school house and techno and a
fearsome dedication to originality.
For them to sign an artist from outside their circle to the HOTP label, then, it'd have to be
someone quite amazingly secure in their own distinctive musical identity - and artists like that
don't come around all that often. But when, after what felt like millennia of MySpaz trawling,
they happened upon imagineIAM from Lafayette, Louisiana, there was an instant spark, a
recognition of someone else who could bend diverse sounds into new shapes by sheer force
of will and an entirely singular vision, and just as importantly, a recognition of someone else
with the groove in their bloodstream.
It would be easy to start bracketing imagineIAM together with contemporary acts that he
enjoys like Dirty Projectors, Daedelus and Animal Collective in some kind of nouveaubohemian
movement - and without a doubt, he does share with those bands a kind of secondgeneration
psychedelic appreciation of the possibilities of music to bypass the niceties of dayto-
day communication, creep into the brain and start rewriting the mind's operating system.
But his work is really a different proposition, without a hint of hippie excess: imagineIAM is all
about the leanest, barest, most stripped-down approach, about taking the simplest
components of beat, bass and voice and constructing from them precision-tooled devices for
exploring extreme possibilities of the human spirit. But for all his drive and intensity,
imagineIAM has a grin on his face as he does this. He has fun, and you will too if you let his
beats into your head. Though it comes from a very different approach, his music has evolved
into something that works in the same way as the best electronic dance, irresistibly urging the
body move and making you feel better about everything as it does so.
In his own words: "My music enters this dimension pretty much smack-dab in the the middle
of all music 'styles', since it is so exact in its presence, and it simply comes to me just as
definite as the sun simply shines... I throw in some extras to make it more sassy, crunk,
ridiculous, holy'n'profane, sacred and shut up... with ninja blood sparkling deep electric it
dares and blooms forth beyond the known edge creating a new world celebration...
unconquerablly creative and classy..." And you know what? He's right.
