Kalamare Beat Club
s/t
Wiretap Recordings

Memo to anyone planning to make a half-serious quaalude-influenced science fiction spy movie set on a beach (and featuring squid?): Here is your soundtrack. This instrumental record has hints of surf and spy music of the James Bond variety, but it's all stretched out slow and spacious, spacious enough that even when it's not slow, it feels slow. It's kind of cool in the slightly groovy but non-demanding retro futuristic atmosphere it sets, and it makes good background music while deeply immersed in something else, but it's hard to imagine really getting into this CD. They do get major bonus points for sampling the wonderful 1960s TV series "The Man From U.N.C.L.E.", but they're neither fun nor engaging enough themselves to merit being sampled 40 years on.
- Nancy Baym