Get ready for something different with the first solo album from electro and progressive house act Mobbing. Interestingly, this label is the club branch of Off Limits Production, the label that released Ann Lee's 2007 comeback album So Alive.
Rock the Dog is not your typical dance album. All tracks but the last are instrumentals, save for a few vocal samples here and there. Quirky bass-driven programming abounds as analog sounds and driving beats crystallize into a groovy electronic cocktail.
I immediately started my trek through this colorful album by skipping to "Butter My Biscuit." Comically, a Stephen Hawking-styled sample spouts the title phrase occasionally. The percussion is more a live kit feel than programmed. If you can make it past the droning siren sounds in much of the first half, you'll end your aural journey with clock alarm and video game sounding fare as the track wraps up.
"Angel," and "Open Legs" are something like you'd expect to hear in a chic nightclub. The former with a bass/synth/string as a lead, peppered with some fresh sounds throughout, and the latter with a high-pitched, almost birds-chirping layer wafting through the background—both with a dark groovy bass moving them along.
"What is This!" will fool you into thinking you've found the only ballad on the record with its serene piano-based intro which finally kicks into dance gear around 1:40. This happier, more pop-friendly track caught my ear with a banjo-reminiscent string sound and a cool, Boomtang Boys "Popcorn"-type bridge.
Female Q-Lab artist Channing lends talent to the vocal closing track "Breaking my Heart." While the melody is not terribly hooky, as one might expect on a record of this nature, the song is a welcome break from the long instrumentals that comprise the majority of the album.
This novelty record is more a fit for lovers of synthesizers, the unusual, Ultrasonics, Venus Hum, or Joy Electric.
Released April 2008 on Q-Lab Records.
