Quitzow: 'Juice Water'

Free spirited Erica Quitzow is an art lover’s favourite musician. She’s well travelled, rebellious, and experimental, with her music effortlessly synchronising with her personality. A journalist’s nightmare.

‘Juice Water’ is Quitzow’s third outing into a musical quest that leaves near comparables MIA and Santogold looking fairly reserved. Along with her cello, violin and other stringed machines, Erica has swiped T-Pain’s vocoder and surgically removed the part of Timbaland’s brain that makes him twist his face around in the 'Morning After Dark' video.

Though I imagine this mish-mash of live instruments and electro was incredibly fun to make, it’s an extremely difficult listen. It feels so self-involved that it quickly starts feeling quite pretentious. The cryptic side of art is not always clever and even if you seek to understand her eccentricity in the lyrics, you’re soon thrown by the obtrusive production.

There are flashes of tolerable creativity. Erica’s use of strings can at times suck you in to her world and oddly when she’s not chanting something of a primal nature her voice can sound quite relaxing. Check out the last third of ‘Race Car 2’ to see what I mean.

Unfortunately I’ve always considered most art to be a flamboyant waste of time and ultimately this does sound to me like a hippy fuelled up on funny fungus that has been converted to MIDI. Interesting all the same.



Released on 2nd February 2010 by Young Love Records.

Written by Scott Colenutt.