Duran Duran 90's style

With 'Medazzaland', Duran Duran has come up with a marvelously subtle album of reflection, scrap irony and regret, all very properly tricked out in the innovative sonic frippery of the global music underground.

"I think this is the most rhythmic album we've made since 'Notorious'," says frontman Simon Le Bon of a spectrum of material that ranges from the brazen bop of 'Electric Barbarella' to 'Silva Halo's' subliminal atmospherics. "And I think it's a little more sophisticated, as well."

Often despised by old school rock critics for their industry-orchestrated rise to fame and not being a "proper" rock band, Duran Duran, nonetheles, remains an influential champion of the '80s pop esthetic by being unashamedly savvy about the way image, attitude, MTV and dedicated record company dollars can manipulate public opinion. In fact, Duran Duran always had more in common with rappers and dance music producers than rockers in their understanding of the star-making machinery. And with keyboardist Nick Rhodes' background as a new-wave club DJ and Le Bon's existentialist origins as a post-punk club kid, how could they become anything but a Situationist exercise in the power of pop culture?

"What we wanted to capture with ['Medazzaland'] was the feeling of the '90s," says Nick. "This album is the first one where I think we've been able to capture the feeling of controlled hysteria and chaos that's surrounding us in the '90s."

Two years in the making, 'Medazzaland' is beautifully produced, full of subtle textures and ear candy that rewards repeated listening. "I think one of the very identifiable flawa of early Duran Duran music was the fact that we were all fighting for the same frequency," admits Le Bon. "Synthesizer, guitar and vocal were all fighting for the same spot, and it made it sound quite brittle."

Guitarist Warren Cuccurullo, who with Le Bon created the hauntingly elegiac ballad, 'Michael You've Got a Lot to Answer For', brings a quirkily eclectic American perspective to the group, which became a trio this year with the official departure of longtime bass player John Taylor.

Between Warren's Zappa-esque experiments and mixer-percussionist Anthony Resta's gift for polyrhythms, 'Medazzaland' explores a pantheon of influences that includes the Beatles, David Bowie, Brian Eno and Sly and the Family Stone. A collaboration with Anglo-Indian producer Talvin Singh even tinged 'Medazzaland' with the Asian scales and tabla riffs of London's Anokha club movement. "The grooves that are on this record just inherently lend themselves to great remixes," Simon says of the group's enthusiastic flirtation with new trends in house, drum-n-bass and Hi-NRG music.

"We feel incredibly at ease with the current climate... with what's happened with electronic dance music coming out of Europe," says Nick. "Because that's where we started. That was our whole concept, to mix electronic music with dance music, with funk, with rock... and it still is."

© Newsday, 1997