Odd. Definitely odd. Good too. Defiantly good. This is the latest offering from Brentwood (UK) based Fragment, Dadadicky is an off-shoot project of Brian Field. Ericks vocalist, and it's well worth a listen if you like something a little different to mainstream rock/pop/indie etc. Musically it's very diverse. Bits of pop, rock, disco, reggae, jazz and numerous other styles are thrown into the melee yet it all holds together supremely well. At times I think of Madness at their most whimsical and experimental, at other times the eclectic style of Tom Waits, maybe Beefheart, perhaps Stump. Bits of brass, cheesy synth, samples and a whole gamut of odd noises combine into an overall sound. Not that Dadadicky can be pinned down into an overall sound. They're too diverse, too inventive and too downright odd to be pigeonholed thus. "Weird People", "Black And White" and "What Did I Do" are wry observations on life, amusing and cutting at the same time. This is perhaps where the strength of Dadadicky lies. They're funny and serious at the same time. Both the music and lyrics are odd yet listenable, strange and entertaining. You might get an array of silly noises coupled with lyrics that are really quite serious but drenched in off-beat humour. Dadadicky lift the veneer of what seems like normal, everyday life and find all that is bizarre crawling about underneath. "Weird People" celebrates giving lifts to weird people who might seem ordinary enough at first glance. On "What Did I Do To Deserve", Dadadicky are "Looking for normal and there is not a sign". Over a lilting reggae rhythm "Indigenous Creature" is about feeling at home and alienation at the same time, feeling apart and a part - there's even a knowing lift from the Human League's "Sound Of The Crowd", and the track eventually fades into the noise of an arcade game. Symbolic perhaps. Always there's a questioning of what is the norm, of what is accepted: "Do you know an Activist, a Feminists, a Fascist" (from "Muffin Man" ); "What's inside a bedroom? What's inside a kitchen?" (from "Belly Button"); "Black and white, politically correct. But that's just polite" (from "Black And White". There are keen intellects at work here, dissembling, dissecting and ridiculing life for the farce of it. This is exemplified on "Toy Robot", a stab at the futility of putting faith in machines that can only ever be as good as those who programme them. But as they say on "Black And White", "What the world needs to learn, the world seems to learn the hard way". I can only recommend this. It's funny, entertaining, seriously odd, oddly serious, very articulate and very, very good. Nuff said.

Only a culture so anti-intellect as ours could coin an adage breathtakingly crass as "Too clever by half". Dadadicky, the latest eccentric release from the wholly admirable Fragment label, celebrates a very different vision, one of experiment and unorthodoxy. Sometimes it seems pointlessly bizarre, like during the crazed "Toy Robot", but none of these compositions are dull, crammed to bursting with content and wry humour. Still you could never persuade the proudly braindead inverted snob to enjoy anything unusually rewarding as, for example, "Bellybutton". Their loss - don't make it yours.

Anything on Fragment is going to be weird, Dadadicky sing about Chilean Revolutionaries who are into Kevin Keegan, they sing about alcoholic tobacco smoking health freak vegans, they sing about giving weird people lifts in their cars. Strange songs! definitely songs (you don't always get songs with Fragment!). Songs that mix electro-acousticness with colourful tape collage. Haven't a clue who Dadadicky are but they can be very, very silly! They have a thing for robots yet remain assured by there own Bellybutton reality. Thirteen songs that sound like no one else. Some of it sounds like the almost legendary History of Gardening, bits of bendy jazzness, not quite as thrilling as Zuno Men but rather good all the same.

Very strange, popish rock and roll ditties with hilarious lyrics (I hope they're supposed to be funny!). From the beginning with "Weird People", these guys set the stage for a truly strange trip. A lot of work went into this, and there is no particular style to compare it to. "Scruple Tango" uses a tango beat with faraway yodel calls behind the lyrics - like the soundtrack for one of those early 1970's European porno flicks, weird, real weird,. But in a good way, like the Residents.
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This owes more to Frank Sidebottom or They Might Be Giants, although it sounds nothing like either, it's more of a "Pop" weirdness than factor X, I guess, with actual songs with actual lyrics. Cross the above with Syd Barrett perhaps. The music's varied and very well performed, and if the singing is sometimes a bit less so, it hardly matters; it would be silly to take such flaws seriously when this album takes nothing else seriously. It even boasts some doubleplusagreeable near-instumentals, one of which is even funky. Much better than most of the other wacky-song albums that float around.
Quirky, peculiar, eccentric group here, using guitar, drums, keyboards, samples and any other instruments. Ranges from the rough and wacky to pretty groovy, and even a tango thrown in for good measure. Oh well, I love this kind of odd little lucid treasures and as Dadadicky sing "The weird thing about weird people is just how weird they are" The perfect soundtrack to a Chilean avant-garde post-modern documentary about eggplants, oh and throw in a couple of blank looking models from Iceland that never talk.