Flashback Tuesday: Cibo Matto

Cibo Matto, comprised of Japanese-born Miho Hatori and Yuka Honda, only went through one thing faster than food -- the genres that comprised their schizophrenic tunes. They formed in 1994, were picked up by Warner Brothers and dropped Viva! La Woman in 1996, which still sounds futuristic a decade on. Their sound was a mix of funk, jazz, dance, indie rock and hip-hop that came off much more cohesive than one may have expected. The only constant for them, at least on that first album, was food. Their name was Italian for "food madness" and each song on that debut disc detailed a love of some kind of food.

In what was perhaps their shining moment, the video for "Sugar Water," the screen was split into two: Miho was on the left [at the beginning of her day] and Yuka was on the right [at the end of her day] with the former moving forward while the latter went backwards. The band took what would have normally been the mundane elements of an ordinary night and made those events totally fresh and interesting.

They released Stereotype A in 1999, enlisting Jon Spencer Blues Explosion drummer Russell Simins and Honda's then-boyfriend Sean Lennon and going in a funkier and dancier direction. They disbanded a few years later with Hatori doing some work with Gorillaz while Honda produced Sean Lennon's Into The Sun and collaborated with The Boredoms on Flower With No Color.

Audio: "Sugar Water"
Audio: "Moonchild"
Audio: "King of Silence" [Dan The Automator remix]