Album Review: The Medic Droid - 'Whats Your Medium'

It's a vague memory, but I can recall the time the CD made the cassette tape obsolete. The day when my old man spun vinyl records and cautioned that over-playing the disc will wear it out the same way the tread sometimes wore off records. Now in the digital age of 2009, it's scary to think the Internet and MP3 players could one day make the CD obsolete too.  

With that said, in order for bands and record labels to stay afloat in today's digital market they have no choice but to use the medium to their advantage and shy away from conventional means of CD distribution. That's pretty much how Phoenix's The Medic Droid went about getting recognition. It is also the theme of their debut release (and probably their last, given they disbanded in December) Whats Your Medium. 

It all started way back in 06 with the first single Fer Sure posted on MySpace. With the help of iTunes and a fair bit of viral marketing the band has now sold close to 50,000 singles online and had over 8 million plays on the social networking site...but I'm old school so I bought the album as an online import. 

Aside from the title's annoying lack of punctuation, Whats Your Medium is far from irritating. Spanning just eight tracks, there's no room for fillers. It's straight to the point, a definite party record. Whats Your Medium is a mixed bag of genres - groovin beat mash ups and drum samples over alluring synthed-out vocal hooks and a hint of indie thrown in for mass appeal. It's pretty much The Terminator on speed! It reminds me of something I should be working out to in Step class, but somehow I don't think Les Mills would go for it. 

The remake of most familiar track Fer Sure lacks the punch of its original now the risqué intro and outro are left off. But it's still a killer track and it's good to see the original naughty lyrics still there; "I wanna see your panties dropp girl now" and "kick off your stilettos and fuck me in the back seat". The MySpace speak never fails to make me giggle either; "jkjkjkj, lolololol" holding onto the album's 'digital' theme.  

Fsecen8 is two-and-a-half-minutes of pure addiction, while the remake of Madonna's Into The Groove is like a train wreck - you don't wanna look but you can't look away. It has just the right amount of cheese and conjures images of leg warmers and fluro gear, although I don't ever recall Madge snorting coke in any of her videos.

Whats Your Medium it's the album you'd love to hate. A mish mash of beats, hooks, samples and a bit of sass. The risqué lyrics that pop up every now and then help push the envelope, which is cool. Who needs radio play anyway? 

1. Keeping Up With The Joneses

2. Saddle Up

3. Fsecen8

4. Into The Groove

5. It's About Love

6. Tease

7. Fer Sure

8. The Killer Anna