Duran Duran: Medazzaland : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Last time we heard from them (in 1995), aging eye-shadow poster boys Duran Duran had a hit cover of Grandmaster Flash's eerie 1983 cocaine rap "White Lines (Don't Do It)." They thereby inadvertently introduced to mid-America the innovations of the obscure early-'80s New York art foursome Liquid Liquid, whose skeletal 1983 "Cavern" had provided hallucinatory backing atmosphere for Flash's original version. Galvanized by dub-reggae chanting, old-school break-dance beats and avant-garde minimalist repetition, Liquid Liquid stripped funk rhythm back to its drum and bass (as in the instruments) essentials. On the new compilation Liquid Liquid, the most fully evolved of the band's rare grooves combine a bare-bones ominousness comparable to early Public Image Ltd. with floor-rattling conga and marimba syncopation.

Heard now, Liquid Liquid could almost pass for present-day DJ-mixed techno music, the tranciness of which also seems to be rejuvenating eternal electropoppers Duran Duran. Medazzaland sets jazzish doodling, adult-contemporary sincerity, Queen-campy crunch and sad, "Dust in the Wind" acoustic tapestries to newfangled mechanical clanks. It finds its dizziest hooks in the updated-Eurodisco of "Electric Barbarella," a runway-model-seduction number titled after the 1968 movie that inspired Duran Duran's name. That very name, you might notice, has always embodied an assemblyline sense of repetition in and of itself – not unlike Liquid Liquid, appropriately enough.