Dave Aju: Open Wide

It'd be easy to dismiss an album that features the

following credit as a gimmick: "All tracks written and produced by Dave Aju

using only his mouth as a sound source. No other recorded voices, sounds,

samples, or instruments were used in any way." Sure, there was Björk's Medulla and Petra Haden's

all-voice rendition of The Who Sell Out—but in techno The

surprise is that Open Wide works purely as music: Play it not knowing how it

was made, and it simply sounds playful, occasionally freaky, and sometimes

beautiful, most especially on slow grooves that bubble up to and over the

surface, like "Crazy Place" and "First Love." The prize, though, is "Anyway,"

the kind of chant-along club anthem so simple and enchanting that there should be

more of its like. But as Aju demonstrates throughout, even the stuff that seems

obvious oftentimes isn't.