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Now operating under this abbreviated alias, IATW is the project of Brooklyn-based Daniel Geller and Amy Dykes, formally the unfortunately named I Am The World Trade Center. Now re-titled as a mark of respect post-September 11th, I Am The World finds Geller (co-founder of Kindercore Records) and his partner Dykes laying-down suitably uncomplicated indie-pop processed by way of an ageing laptop. While Geller engineers a backdrop of breezy retro beats, Dykes floats and glides over the rhythms with her superbly sardonic, detached larynx, pitched somewhere near Debbie Harry and Sarah Cracknell. These are lo-fi, cut 'n' paste, drag 'n' drop tunes armed with a naïve charm that's tough to deny, particularly on the synth-driven, melancholic urges of 'Sounds So Crazy' and the Daft Punk dragged backwards through an SU bar groove of 'Move On'. Reminiscent at various times of Looper, Luscious Jackson, Laika and Stereolab, IATW are a bedsit Garbage struggling to get to grips with their malfunctioning Casio keyboard or an alternative electroclash combo forgetting the prerequisite eyeliner and still fearful of catching the millennium bug. Add N To (X) as applied by students of Sarah Records, dance music for people still clinging resolutely to their Wedding Present t-shirts, whatever they call themselves, I Am The World are certainly an outfit well-worthy of being on first name terms with.

Ian Fletcher
CWAS #11 - Autumn 2002

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