Dim Dim - Whip
[Popmatters] US
by David Abravanel

There’s an imaginary world where childlike innocence meshes inexplicably well with menacing, loony, adult sensibilities. Where mental illness and brilliance are essentially one and the same, sugar high from Technicolor candy and bright syrupy sodas. It’s hard to capture the this essence, which might explain why, say, a book like Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory has seen two incomplete movie adaptations (though, for the record, Gene Wilder will always be Willy Wonka in my heart). The dilemma: how to embrace rainbows and birds and neon landscapes without descending into pap, and how to slyly introduce the darkness around the corner without crashing in excessive macabre?

I can’t give a definitive answer to these burning questions, but that je ne sais quoi mark of artistic brilliance pushes Whip, Dim Dim’s latest and best album, into that mind-blowing realm. This is music from relatable origins, but its themes are decidedly surreal. A comic book artist in his other life, Belgian Jerry Dimmer has dedicated this record to beats with silly samples, little guitar ditties, and bubbly piano and marimba. The joyous storm clouds and songbirds flanking a humanoid cat on the cover are fitting visual ambassadors from the land in which this music would appear as the natural soundtrack. Reach out and shake hands with a car, only to have it smile back at you and then perhaps explode in multicolored bodily fluids. Then resume along your merry away, but don’t forget to waltz with the flowers.

This kind of plinky electronic silliness owes a decent debt to Jean Jacques-Perry, as seen in the zany monosyllabic samples and giggles that punctuate the synth blobs on tracks like the otherwise-deceivingly debonair “Split”. Elsewhere, a series of tiny intros embrace squelchy synth warbles and uncanny emotional attacks, such as the helium French narration on “Pityfull Player” or the radio dial surf “Tune In”. If Dimmer’s vision has allowed him entry to the aforementioned imaginary world of surreal artistic gold, he’s a wise observer, utilizing hip-hop beats and a manic way with eclectic samples.

Whip maintains listener interest astoundingly well, via Dimmer’s consistent curve balls. The deep and weepy pad punctuating the title track sounds like nothing else on the record, and pretty much every longer track has some kind of signature sound or riff so as to establish it as an individual worth revisiting. Leaping to “Smart”, we’re treated to a sunset of beautifully bent, tropical guitar. Dimmer’s beats have always been loony, but never before has his beat making been this crazy like fox. Like contemporary Mr. Scruff, he’s a master of eyebrow-raising layers, one odd new sound after another added to each little sonic stew. But, one-upping his peers, Dimmer’s tracks this time around grab a hold from the get-go. Given the sequencing of the album (particularly considering its shorter interludes) it’s best to listen to Whip linearly; randomly throwing on, say, “In Your Town,” makes it no less an enjoyable piece of breathy female vocal-laden avant-pop.

As for that sense of menace I mentioned earlier, I suppose Whip is a bit light when it comes to dark corners (pun possibly intended). But the optimism inherent in this album is clearly genuine, from a man who lives a normal life of ups and downs, but, possessed of a powerful imagination, has opted to unleash his surreal conceptions upon the world. And Mika had the audacity to title his record Life In Cartoon Motion? For the adventurous souls interested in a chunky rainbow of beats and bounce, Whip is as good as it gets.

Dim Dim - Whip (Audio Dregs Recordings)
Published by Adrian Elmer at December 24, 2008 in Reviews Issue 22.
[Cyclic Defrost] Australia

Whip is the type of album that you come across every now and then with absolutely no expectations and which blows you away. I had never heard of Dim Dim before this, his sixth full length album, landed on my review pile. There was no real indication as to what the music might be like other than the colourful, cutesy computer graphic characters on the cover artwork. Turns out that’s probably as good a depiction of the music as any - playful, eclectic and engaging with just a hint of darkness to make sure it never descends into twee.

The album is, in general, a blend of sample based electronica with odd acoustic instruments such as ukelele, toy piano or regular guitar. The best overall description I can come up with is that it sounds like Howie B on happy gas. Strange voices warble out from beyond the vinyl grave on tracks such as ‘Sheena’, ‘Pityfull Player’ and ‘Pourtant’. Blobby bass synths light up ‘Hips’ and ‘Sexy Panda’. Samples are pilfered from anywhere and everywhere and thrown through wonky processing - jazz-lite in ‘Urge Gap’, radio-play soundtrack in ‘Rank’, bachelor pad exotica in ‘Tune In’. But Jerry Dimmer avoids kitsch through a seriousness in his rhythms and the use of extended tracks of true beauty such as ‘Smart’ and ‘Belle Etranger’.

You couldn’t really call this music groundbreaking, but that is hardly the point. In its own way it is wonderfully constructed, creative, playful and well paced. It stands up to repeated listening, revealing new layers, and is a true pleasure to listen to.
-Adrian Elmer

Dim Dim: Whip
[Textura] CA
Transmute The Joker's “Why so serious” into wacky pop bricolage and the result might be Dim Dim's Whip. Squeezing eighteen vignettes into fifty minutes, Belgian music producer and artist Jerry Dimmer packs his six full-length chock-full of merry melodies, eclectic voice samples, ukulele, candy-coloured synths, toy instruments, guitar riffs, and programmed beats. He intermixes short, off-the-wall experiments (e.g., the fragmented collage “Tune In” and Latin-driven mayhem of “Ha Ha”) with more substantial songs, such as the six-minute “Smart”—a veritable epic in this context—which weaves a squirrelly mix of dreamy slide guitar, light-footed rhythms, and Afro-funk guitar-and-bass interplay into a sun-kissed whole. In his collage-like experiments, Dimmer often throws two or three ideas together to see if they might stick, the merging of guitar-based funk jam with seductive voice cooing during “In Your Town” one example of many. “Split” neatly wraps George Benson-styled guitar shadings, acoustic bass, spindly afro-jazz guitar playing, voice snippets, acid-funk and soul jazz guitar into a frothy whole, and the punk-funk stepper “Sheena” with its warbling vocal parts is memorable too. Dimmer can do pretty when he wants to: close your eyes and the tropical guitar breeze and tight double-time beats of “Tatjana” could transport you to a Hawaiian seaside resort in an instant. Elsewhere, classical strings get sucked into a woozy undertow in “Rank” while “Urge Gap” races with a G-man jazz pulse. The child-like, brightly-coloured cover illustration's a perfect match for the music too (surprisingly, the artwork wasn't by Dimmer but rather Belgian illustrator Oréli). Though Whip is serious fun, Dimmer's clearly not out to change the world (would a song title such as “Sexy Panda” suggest otherwise?). There's no grand message, just high-spirited, even lunatic open-endedness that's anything but lugubrious or po-faced. Chin-strokers beware.
January 2009

Dim Dim: Whip
Reviewed By: Maarten Schiethart
Label: Audio Dregs
Format: CD

Ten years Dim Dim tried to get the wise fruitcake world party started yet something must have denied him reaching that unique goal. It must be one of the world's greatest mysteries. His combination of juicy jigs and an unbiased sense of exploration perhaps does not comply with the cynical adult world. Dim Dim originates from Brussels, lived with his family in Paris and, settled in Portugal now, has a sixth album on sale which, after four fruit inspired titles and one entitled 'Bounce', is called 'Whip'. How very true, it brings lashings of fun.
Belgium is at the crossroads of many cultures, so we hear touches of central-African guitar licks melting seamlessly with cartoon film sound snippets popping up as if we were hopping between stands at a global music market square. But Dim Dim's music owes a debt to surrealism as well. All is carefully crafted with the sole aim to please body and mind.

'Whip' is one step further on from the 'Bounce' album. Dim Dim now goes Brazil. Not much of a surprise there, given Dim Dim's Portugal residency. Another charming new move is the ska song towards the end of this deliciously innocent and inspired mish mash. Dim Dim's world is a wonderland, where teletubbies mature their carefree behaviour with the aid of electronic music. Bubbling, not jumpy, sounds will uplift even the grumpiest soul.

DIM DIM - WHIP
DI ROBERTO MANDOLINI
[Losing Today]

Dopo una pausa durata quattro anni torna il belga Jerry Dimmer con il suo pastiche di pop elettronico iconoclasta e futurista. Sulle diciotto tracce di "Whip" Dim Dim - questo il bizzarro alias scelto da Dimmer per pubblicare la sua musica - mescola exotica, musiche folkloristiche, dance-pop, electro, ipotetiche colonne sonore di cartoni animati e forse meno immaginarie basi per video giochi con un'attitudine decisamente scanzonata. Uno sguardo naif pervade ogni singolo minuto dei cinquanta in scaletta: tra le altre cose Jerry dipinge con la stessa audacia con cui compone musica e la sua arte è ben conosciuta in Francia dove ha disegnato per gli editori di fumetti più rinomati del paese. Bastano ventinove secondi ("Nusty In Love") per capire che Dim Dim è anche capace di scrivere dance hits adatte alle spiegge di Ibiza. Frank Zappa se ne sarebbe innamorato.

Dim Dim: Bounce
[Grooves 19]
Dim Dim's fourth album Bounce (Audio Dregs) is a seriously silly romp through twenty sunny cuts by Bruxelles, Belgium resident Jerry Dimmer. As gleeful as your nearest children's playground, the disc's songs squeeze enough melodies and sounds into three minutes to last an album or two. In “Flavia,” Dimmer warps and slices a French speaker's voice before heading out on an African juju romp with a troupe of whistlers while “Peach” works a skanky funk pulse, skat singing, and sunny vocal chants into a resplendent charmer. The colourful cruise includes jubilant lounge escapades, slapstick sambas, soul-reggae grooves, and warped waltzes. Though drum machines, synth blips, and cartoon babble appear, Dimmer's instrument of choice seems to be guitar as oodles of Hawaiian, wah-wah, and pealing axe sounds figure prominently throughout (“Party” even includes a talk-box). Rest assured Dim Dim's sounds will brighten even the most embittered curmudgeon's day.
February 2006
-Ron SChepper

Dim Dim: Bounce
[C60 Crew]

Kim Kirkpatrick: Bounce is Dim Dim’s fourth album (the third on Portland, Oregon's Audio Dregs label). Dim Dim is the creative musical work of one Jerry Dimmer, who lives in Brussels, Belgium. I say musical because, besides working as a musician, he was once a professional cartoonist. It shows: it's a strong creative aspect of his music. The music is animated, suitable for kids as well as adults, endlessly layered—and amusing, like a classic, hand-created, frame-by-frame cartoon. And bubbly—refreshing—like a fine, sparkling, fruity, Belgian beer—say, Lindeman’s Peche Lambic, for example.
Bounce is more refined than Ananas (the first Dim Dim I heard, in 2000), which was heavier on the cartoon characteristics and silliness. Bounce is his most intricate, lush, layered, and musical release to date, still very amusing, happy and fun, but it shows Dimmer’s progress. The CD is full of cheesy synth sounds, kids, and breathy female voices, whistling, blips, and beeps (he does video game music as well). A Japanese cuteness surfaces now and then; really there is too much density to describe here.

Predominant in his building-blocks for most of the songs are excellent electric guitar tracks. It is generally bright and clean, often African High Life in feel, sometimes reggae, pedal steel, funky wah-wah, or just a simple Jonathan Richman style of strumming. Rhythm (from around the world) and beatz is Dim Dim’s thing, and he will have you moving and smiling involuntarily track after track. The smoothness and symmetry of his skills is a pleasure to experience, the harmony and balance he creates while producing so much diversity makes me happy and amuses my children to no end. If you’ve been skirting the edges of beatz, of cut-and-paste music, never feeling satisfied, Dim Dim is a very pleasant, pop-styled way into this complex and NOW musical world. In fact, go ahead and buy all the Dim Dim releases—it is a safe bet.

Mike Johnston: Beware Audio Dregs' website. The music it plays is so great I had to leave it up in a tab in my browser all evening. Like a warm shower you can't get out of.

Bob Burnett: Terrific. I had never done anything beyond listen to the two CDs you sent me, Kim—in fact one wall-to-wall just last week while driving back to Washington, D.C. from Sarasota, Florida (1000 miles). I just assumed they were a Japanese novelty pop band. Makes complete sense now that a Flemish cartoonist does Dim Dim—case in point. I was in Ghent, Belgium, a few years ago; a beautiful ancient town just west of Brussels that has city planners with the creative huevos to close the inner downtown to automobiles and make it a bicycles-, light rail-, and pedestrian-friendly experience. I was taken by friends to a very little bar that was an homage to Serge Gainsberg! We sipped Martinis and talked "Jane Birkin—trés formidable" with the bar-keep.
Dim Dim would have fit right in. Next time I go to Ghent I'll be looking for the Dim Dim Juniper Gin a Bump-Bump Bar. And I'll open it if it doesn't exist.

Dim Dim "Kiwi"
[Allmusic] USA

Producer Jerry Dimmer's previous career as a children's illustrator and creator of music for video games is all over this his fourth album, with a scattering of tunes which would comfortably transport a couple of mismatched characters through a wibbly wobbly land of primary colors. The oompah back end and muted synth trumpets of "Flit" are certain to bring a smile to even the most disinterested face, but Kiwi is far more than just a cel-shaded appropriation of electronic music, with Dim Dim intended as Dimmer's alter ego outside of his day-to-day -- there are also more adult sounds amongst the childlike swoops and pirouettes. Hence the dirty slap-bass that drives the Afro-funk of "Here and Now" or the infectious garage rock beats which make like a mariachi with a margarita too many in the crazed Mexicana of "Los Gitanos." As well-executed as anything else to see release on the superb Audio Dregs imprint, Dim Dim sticks a comical two fingers to the chin-stroking intelligent dance music glitterati.
— Kingsley Marshall

 

Dim Dim "Kiwi"
[Exploding Plastic] USA
Continuing with the video game electronic soundtrack sponsored by the audio dregs label, the Belgian artist Dim Dim (aka Jim Dimmer) releases Kiwi which continues off his previous albums quirky cartoonish charm. This time the listener finds them self in a landscape somewhere between the original super mario bros and a Hawaiian luau. The skill at which he realizes this vision is what separates this albums sound from being just another attempt at the cutesy genre which too often enters the challenging unlistenable arena due to monotonus song construction and overdone layering of casio presets.
Instead tracks like "Holigo" zip zap along with a simple train engine rhythm and almost follow a traditional verse-bridge-chorus routine sung by penguins on helium balloons while ufos fly by overhead. I love how the vocals alter and make me try to figure them out by becoming slightly more humanlike as film noir orchestral sounds stab through the outro. Another standout track is "Here and Now" which contains a breakbeat disco groove until it leaps out into a tropical serenade of a melodic reverb guitar progression that somehow avoids being a bad idea on paper. The whole album continues the fun effortlessly moving through the overused cliches of the last ten years of dance rhythms with a timeless summer feel. Find this one immediately before the last days of warm weather are over.
-Adrian Huth
August 12, 2003

Dim Dim "Kiwi"
[Grooves] USA
Ah, the playfulness of childhood-it's certainly referenced often enough in electronic music, proving fertile territory for everyone from Nobukazu Takemura to Scratch Pet Land. Enter Dim Dim, one Jerry Dimmer from Belgium, who with his fourth album has essentially dished up the most jyous bit of Cornelius-style pop hysteria in eons. Dim Dim is by nomeans simply a Japanese rip-off artist: His music is collage based and perhaps less innocent in its carnivorous pop-fueled dementia. Half the songs on Kiwi evoke frenetic, demented Daffy Duck-as-lunatic pre-war Looney Toons; the other half veer from sweet pop lyracism to eccentric lounge lizard funk.
For the first 17 tracks or so, it's all damn near spot-on perfect. Unfortunately, there are 20 tracks on Kiwi, including a vastly inferior remix of the preternaturally funky-cute "Fuch Fucha," and the record loses a bit of gas towards the end. But, bo matter, Kiwi, is, still, hands down, the most enjoyable record I've heard in quite some time (just try to suppress a smile when listening to "Lila Olie or "Kiki" or watching the video to "Fuch Fuha" for that matter). It's oh-so highly satisfying in these sad and sorry times to regress to as cloe to the womb as psychically possible without losing consciousness altogether-Dim Dim does the trick.
-Susanna Bolle

Dim Dim "Kiwi" (Audiodregs /Importation)
[Hang Up] FR
(translated from French)
Crossed in particular on the compilation which the Portland cement label had carried out with Tomlab, Dim Dim is the project of a Belgian musician. Here a new album which proposes a jovial and ludic electronics. With the with dimensions funny ones, entrainant us in a universe of animated drawings, the music of Jerry Dimmer is not less very melody. With relents of counting rhymes, of limps with music, of airs of popular musics, the artist (in all the directions of the term since it is him which created the cover art as well) attempted to compose of the distracting pieces, as an improbable meeting with the best of Le Tone (period Joli dragon) and of the electronic experiments clicks and beeps. Far from being caught with serious he seems you, that made of the good note that in this world of electronics, there are types which is illustrated by their light character, beyond any often painful intellectualization and without bases. One will find same splendid titles like "Caramba", ballade nonchalante...

Dim Dim
Kiwi
[Dusted] US
Sweet Forbidden Fruit
The most succulent offerings from Audio Dregs’ sonic platter have always had a quality of familiarity about them, usually stemming from a well-crafted organic minimalism swept into electronic melodies. Kiwi, the fourth full-length recording by label mainstay Dim Dim, succeeds in achieving the same recognizable qualities, although where others twist low-key, natural elements into a more palatable electronic pop, this record melds the more over-the-top musical elements of pop life into a digestible blend. Indeed, for Bruxelles-based Jerry Dimmer, the man behind Dim Dim and plenty of video game soundtracks, the main sources of inspiration here seem to stem heavily from the world of shopping mall tropicalia, overused breakbeats, and above all the mighty Casio preset. While previous releases have seen each of these elements played up individually to one degree or another, this is the first time we see Dimmer coming out of his shell with a fully realized and consistent record. While Kiwi could easily plunge either way into tedious conceptualism or cartoonish lack of substance, the music toes the balance beam without wavering dangerously far in either direction. Individual compositions retain personality while holding together as a cohesive unit, again in the same manner as a set of keyboard demo tracks – witness the relaxed calypso number (replete with tactfully placed breaks) flow effortlessly into the Latin samba shaker, the faux-jazz swinger and the chime-laced tango. When Dimmer samples, he avoids the obvious affairs that sometimes plague attempts at this sort of culture commentary, or are at least buried under catchy enough rhythms to avoid immediate detection. Kiwi remains a strikingly unique affair, and one that fits nicely in a lineup of E*rock-produced gems. It would be remiss to omit mention of the two bonus features complementing the album, first being the well-done Tipsy remix of Kiwi’s second piece “Fucha Fucha”, the San Francisco lounge freaks’ ‘thank you’ for Dimmer’s contribution to their Remix Party! album. Also, packaged on the enhanced portion of the disc is an entirely appropriate Mumbleboy animation set to the music of the same track. Kiwi is the most developed piece in the Dim Dim discography, and a carefree, worthwhile piece of work.
By Bennett Yankey

Dim Dim
Kiwi
[Autres Directions] France
[ audio dregs/import ]After publishhaving already published Space Cake and Ananas at Dregs Audio , Dim Dim returns with its fourth Kiwi album. And the music of this inhabitant of Brussels (Jerry Dinner) is terribly fruity. Follower of a electronica to the cordial consonances, it uses and misuses the resolutely funny gimmick (possibly resulting from animated drawings of Warner - Dinner worked as draughtsman of cartoons, but also as illustrator of children's books) as of a weapon spiced to create funny exotic universe and nicely twisted where one can cross guitars hawaïennes, cries of Furby and Tarzan, rhythmic station-wagons weak, environments Calypso or samba etc... A little as if the music of Robert Mitchum crossed the naivety of Jonathan Richman on an island of the Southern Pacific Kiwi, last result of this original composition, is a dancing disc of step less than twenty titles, among which one remixé by Tipsy, of the tubes cretins carambars and vahines, and other candies which prick. Shifted and pickling.
-stéphane

DIM DIM - Kiwi
[Giant Robot #28] US
Dim Dim is a Belgian guy named Jerry Dimmer. After listening to this CD, you might look dumb with a big goofy grin plastered on your face. The songs resemble videogame soundtracks, like cartoony footsteps of Mario and Yoshi. The French and Japanese samples mixex with home-keyboard effects will take you to Smileyville. Also on the disc is a densley packed Mumbleboy animation. Together, they make a perfect combination of graphics and sound. It's a fun album that's steeped in pop culture.
-en

Dim Dim - Kiwi (Audio Dregs)
[Time Out New York] NYC
Jerry Dimmer, a.k.a. Dim Dim, has created one busy, colorful little bouillabaisse. On Kiwi, the Belgian musician's fourth album, Dimmer throws in as much as he can fit into his bite-size lo-fi-tronica tunes. And as you might guess from his nom de disque, Dimmer's music is blissfully twee: Not only does he flaunt his naive tunes at every turn, but at least a quarter of the disc's 20 songs feature keyboard sounds easily recognizable as coming from a mid-'80s Casio with 100 sound options. (The melody of "Cuppack," for instance, alternates among a drifting theremin, a toy piano and what sounds like that cheap old synth's "raindrops" setting.) Dimmer keeps it real, all right—real cheap.

Real charming, too, a lot of the time. Laptop folk is a term that's come into favor to describe posttechno artists trafficking in pastoral soundscapes, and Dimmer's frequent use of acoustic guitar and, on "Stubby Neck," mandolin puts him right in line with that movement. Frequently, Kiwi sounds like playfully ruminative front-porch noodling sent through a laptop warp. "Flit" picks out a simple guitar melody over a two-note bass pulse processed to sound like a crackling 78, while "Riri" offers six-string curlicues that bring to mind both Hawaiian slack-key and Congolese rumba styles over a bed of hard drive-birthed sproings and flutters. Elsewhere, Boards of Canada fans will find interest in the high-pitched, childlike melodies of "Fucha Fucha" and "Spiral."

Dimmer's sensibility remains airy even when he layers thicker beats into the mix. "Here and Now" rides a shuffling stomp that recalls early-'90s British rave-rock—like a shaggier, homespun Madchester—while "Kika" modulates a little girl's processed ah over a beat, as if the Powerpuff Girls covered Deee-Lite's "Good Beat." Elsewhere, "Los Gitanos" gives a drum 'n' bass-like beat a jack-in-the-box feel, thanks to a hyperstrummed acoustic guitar and nonchalantly nattering chipmunk voices. As with that Casio Dimmer is so fond of, batteries are not included.—Michaelangelo Matos

Dim Dim "kiwi" CD
[hand stitched heart] USA
Dim Dim is like going into the world of 50’s hoo la hoop commercial world and adding casio bliped out beats behind it. You don’t know to think if this is some dope shit or if it’s a little too far, that’s something that makes it almost genius. The song "Fucha Fucha" is a perfect example of this humorous sound that Dim Dim does so well.

When you get to "Caramba" you get to more of a serious and dancey side of Dim Dim that was not portrayed in the other songs. He uses a lot of traditional guitar and bass playing looped giving this a more organic feel, with nice break beat action pushing the song from behind. But even as serious it can be, Dim Dim knows where to fit in the humorous sounds in there somewhere.

I really like the song "spiral" sound. Well written melodies with the lack of any beats, just all melodies with the occasional tap. It then developes more into a video game feel for the final touch at the end.

This album is packed with different Dim Dim song, 20 total! And he mixes it up pretty good. Not staying with the same sounding song one after another. Some of them you could even dance to, like the song "cuppack".
Another fine release from Audio Dregs.
- John Kale

Dim Dim - Kiwi
[De-Bug] DE
Audio Dregs is a completely beautifully great label. This convinces you. Dim Dim, aka Jerry Dimmer, comes surprisingly from Belgium, many degrees far from the homeland of the Hawain guitar with that the album on "Riri" (hihi) begins. It plocks and plinks, takes off ton the old icons of the "franzoesichen Electrokubismus" the socks, wags entertainment park Hymnen of the finest, leaves fit proves in addition infants tons scratchen, knows all harmony teachings from the Efef, if thus emergency into the completely correct order, and which could go through whole album confidently as Dat Politics for the completely small ones among you. Thus: purely into the world from Technicolor, ton toy instrument tin cans, sugar cotton wool and Himmelns down counted from Break-Beats and honey bread. Who has fear the fact that that is here already again one this regressiven IDM Schnoeselalben is versichtert that NO, that is as material as to overdose vitamin B12 here. Condemned, already all have ton retrieve his fourth album, incoming goods A plumb bob. And now mitschnurren.
bleed *****

German version:
Audio Dregs ist ein ganz schön grossartiges Label. Überzeugt euch selbst. Dim Dim, aka Jerry Dimmer kommt überraschenderweise aus Belgien, nicht grade die Heimat der Hawaiguitarre mit der das Album auf "Riri" (hihi) anfängt. Es plockert und plinkert, zieht den alten Ikonen des französichen Electrokubismus die Socken aus, wedelt mit Vergnügungspark-Hymnen vom feinsten, lässt passenderweise dazu Kleinkinder scratchen, kennt alle Harmonielehren aus dem Efef, wenn auch nicht in der ganz richtigen Reihenfolge, und das ganze Album könnte getrost als Dat Politics für die ganz Kleinen unter euch durchgehen. Also: rein in die Welt aus Technicolor, zu Spielzeuginstrumenten runtergerechneten Blechdosen, Zuckerwatte und Himmelns aus Breaks, Beats und Honigbrot. Wer Angst hat, dass das hier schon wieder eins dieser regressiven IDM Schnöselalben ist, sei versichtert, dass nein, das hier ist so real wie eine Überdosis Vitamin B12. Verdammt, schon sein viertes Album, wir haben alle eine ganze Menge nachzuholen. Und jetzt mitschnurren.
bleed *****

DIM DIM "Kiwi" CD
[Muzik] (France)
The fourth album of this market-gardener of electronics variegated, is entitled "Kiwi" and takes action on surprising "Ananas", which succeeds "Nectarine", disc born of ashes of "Space Cake", first appearance on CD-R of this Inhabitant of Brussels, cartoonist of profession, which was announced already different, of an international electronica production which hums. Kiwi is a disc full with irony. Coloured, arranged and inhabited by a mutitude of expensive voices to the animated drawings of the Forties, Jerry Drummer (aka Dim Dim) develops its musical universe, a such hyperactive Hermit. Cutting and joining play here a significant role in the structure total of the pieces. They cause a play of opposite course rhythmic, that a melody with the pricked and ingenuous notes, pilot guitar. Dim Dim evokes the Islands of a virtual space, an animated music.
[Gaétan NAEL]

DIM DIM "Ananas" CD
[other music] (NYC)
Dim Dim is the alias of Belgian musician Jerry Dimmer; it's also the name of the cartoon dog who is the imaginary 'star' of his music. On this, the third Dim Dim CD, Dimmer's sweet, bouncy electronics generally are becoming more minimal. He's not turning into Brinkmann or anything -- he's just finding repetition more and more enthralling. On the other hand, this is the most 'vocal' of the Dim Dim releases, with different altered vocal snippets 'becoming' a range of cartoon 'characters.' But they never say much: They nod and sigh and speak in twisted bits of fun gibberish: chipmunks in le discotheque. Dimmer speeds up all of his samples before he moves them around, so they have a fun, eager momentum, and a trebly cast. (Frequent ones: bloops, twitters, whistling, videogame noises, fake barking, fake scratching, electronic toys, pretty echoes.) Ironically, it's perfect music for either kids and commercials -- the kind of bouncy fluff that grabs those with a short attention span. Solid from start to finish. [RE]

DIM DIM "Ananas" CD
[katpodik] (Italy)
It cannot sure be said that the Audio label Dreggs from Portland U.S.A, is not eclectic since it numbers between its productions this Belgian artist of name Dim Dim.
His second called album ' Ananas' extension in cover the design of the dog happiest for eating, rigorously with knife and fork, a pineapple. And fresh as a fruit is the compositions that spaces from the nenia hip hop of Yipper with enclosed samplings of sounds space them, filtered voice, sbilenco riff tecno, to "Love Serenade" that it joins to the song hyper accelerated of its maestà Pineapple in person riff jungle for one an amusing combination and sbarazzina; or "Japanese Jerks" where on a orchestrale base POP the voice ' morbida' and ' vellutata' is of the Singing Vegetables (to see the amusing photos and the designs to the inside of the booklet). Ulterior delight the "Magique Rayons" that unfolds noises of guns giocattolo, videogiochi, sounds elaborates to you and rimodulati in way it gybes and bislacca. Also the infantile voice of the host Pim Di Martini makes here to seem the ideal piece for the "Zecchino of gold of the front future. Or "Kelly and Ken" where also the sint it is stirred to the other produced sounds not knows from where. Rutilito, phrenetic hip hop that the House Of Pain of ' Aim Malt Lyrics ' remembers, the same scherzosa vein and danzereccia, or still "Thumb", infiltrated monolitico drum' n' bass from acoustic samplings. In conclusion it can be said that the artist has just guessed us with this amusing mixture and godibilissima also after repeated listenings. One good hope for the future. ****
[Mark Paolucci]

DIM DIM: Space Cake CDR [FREQUENCY #3]
Brussel's Dim Dim have a reassuringly playful approach to their music. When creating songs, they manipulate the aesthetic found on many of the current releases on Germany's A-Musik label - where electronics are manipulated and cut and pasted to create rhythms that play a very important role in a song's overall structure. This removes the seriousness from the music and gives it a more cheerful and frolicsome tone. Picture amusement park music played on a late 80's Casio keyboard. What you get is a pop-flavored finished product that fits on the shelves in between releases by acts such as Schlammpeitziger, Boards of Canada, and Mouse on Mars. (Jeremy D. Rotsztain)