author: Lenny
The only credits on this recording read "produced by Bing Selfish and Xentos Bentos, engineered and arranged by Xentos "Fray" Bentos". Xentos is another of those "Muddy Mae Suggins" types, like Rob Storey, who doesn't seem to know who he is from one week to the next. Allegedly, his real name is Jim Whelton, but he's been called variously L Voag, Amos and most recently seems to be calling himself Dave Marsh. He was once the nimble, brilliant bassist of The Homosexuals, played with The Work and a whole slew of ad hoc ensembles in the 80's. More recently he's been a third of the satirical, song dismantling sampledelic group, Die Trip Computer Die, and has a newly released collaboration with Lukas Simonis under the name, Perfect Vacuum, which I've yet to hear.
Bing has an extensive discography which is so obscure, no one in the US seems to carry any of it, thus the only prior recording with which I'm familiar is his brilliant Dizzy with Success CD on Ed Baxter's Alcohol Label, which imprint also released The Orchestre Murphy's Smut. If you can imagine Jack Jones crooning songs about politics and art history over a nimble little Jazzy pop combo, you'll have some idea of what Dizzy with Success sounds like, and I mean that as a compliment.
Space College comes across as a combination of Dizzy's songwriting with Die Trip's pop konstructivist approach. The songs are linked by themes of astronomical concepts and space travel, which has had me wondering at certain moments, if I'm listening to a recording loosely based on themes from Italo Calvino's CosmicComics. As yet I haven't noticed any mention of Calvino's hero, Qfwfq, but I wouldn't be surprised to find him in there somewhere. Xentos' arrangements make evocative use of all the retro-futuristic implications of the concept.
I've been seeking more of Bing's work ever since I heard Dizzy with Success, and I'm excited to see that CD Baby is now carrying another of Bing's albums with his great band The Ideals, entitled Calling All Dionysians.
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