| Tu-Plang | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | ||||
| Studio album by | ||||
| Released | 6 May 1996 | |||
| Recorded | Sunshine Studio & Red Zeds, Brisbane, February 1996; Center Stage Studios,Bangkok, Thailand, March 1996[1] | |||
| Genre | ||||
| Length | 40:58 | |||
| Label | East West/WEA Australia 0630-14895 Reprise/Warner Bros. (US) 46509 | |||
| Producer | Magoo | |||
| Regurgitator chronology | ||||
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| Singles from Tu-Plang | ||||
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Tu-Plang (ตู้เพลงThai forJukebox) is the debut studio album released by Australian rock bandRegurgitator. It was released in Australia in May 1996, where it sold well despite receiving little radio airplay.[2] It was later released in the United States on April 22, 1997.[3][4]
At theARIA Music Awards of 1996, the album won two awards;Best Alternative Album andBreakthrough Artist - Album. In 2012, Regurgitator performed the entire album along withUnit on the Australian RetroTech tour.
After making twoEPs, the band chose to record the album inBangkok,Thailand, to the quandary of its label, Warner Music, which was uncertain as to what terms A&R executive Michael Parisi had contracted.[4] Ely later said, "We didn't want to do it in just any old place, so we had a tour in Europe and Japan booked and our drummer Martin said, 'let's stop in Thailand on the way and check out some studios,' so we did and we found this place."[5]
ProducerMagoo later said the studio, "was [owned by] this guy [who was in the band]Carabao. He was described to us as the local, Thai,Bruce Springsteen. He had this compound in outer Bangkok. We'd drive there and it's in the middle of all these slums. There were wild chickens running around everywhere. There were open sewers and stuff like that."[6]
In a September 1997 review ofTu-Plang, Alex Steininger of American siteIn Music We Trust described Regurgitator as being Australia's answer to theBloodhound Gang, who are known for their comedyrap rock style.[7] He said, "from offensive lyrics to funny lyrics, it's all covered here". Others have also compared the album to the bandWeen, due to its variety of styles.[8] The album has elements offunk metal/rap metal,cocktail music,dance,dub,Indigenous Thai music,industrial music,hip hop,Muzak,pop rock,punk,surf rock,turntablism andspaghetti western music.[3][2]
They toured with a wide range of bands around the album's release, includingthrash metal bands andindie bands.[2] During 1996, they also opened in Australia for theRed Hot Chili Peppers, where bassist Benjamin Ely comically wore a dress.[2] They followed the Red Hot Chili Peppers shows by touring with Japaneseavant-garde bandBoredoms.[10] They then did their first U.S. tour as guests ofGod Lives Underwater, followed by a Japan/Australian tour with New York bandCIV.[10] Frontman Quan Yeomans refused to tour the United States more than three weeks at a time, which led their American distributorReprise to quickly lose interest inTu-Plang following its April 1997 U.S. release.[4] In addition to being released in the U.S., the album was also released in Japan around this time.[10]
| Review scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |    link |
In 1997,The Sydney Morning Herald described the album as, "an album that leapt from rock to rap, from fun to funk, from thrash to surf rock (a laDick Dale), and it did nothing less than announce the arrival of the most significant band in Australia today. More successfully than any of their peers, Regurgitator showed they were committed to pushing the boundaries of contemporary music through their marriage of technology and pop."[11]The Age said in 1996 that the album "at times resembles a net surfer's wet dream, skipping from one style to another, sometimes mid-song," and noted Yeomans' sardonic lyrics.[12] They later votedTu-Plang as one of the greatest albums from the first 50 years of Australian music.[13] In 2018, Australia'sABC referred toTu-Plang as "the peak of weird in Australian music".[14]
Less flatteringly, AllMusic said the album was, "an utterly misbegotten funk-rap-metal fusion which, much as the band's name implies, offers merely another rehash of the usual genre fare." The song "Pop Porn" was singled out for being, "so overboard in attacking rap misogyny that it reaches levels of offensiveness beyond anything actually in the true hip-hop canon."[3]
| Chart (1996/97) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| Australian Albums (ARIA)[15] | 3 |
| New Zealand Albums (RMNZ)[16] | 27 |
| Chart (1996) | Position |
|---|---|
| Australian Albums Chart[17] | 59 |
| Region | Certification | Certified units/sales |
|---|---|---|
| Australia (ARIA)[18] | Platinum | 70,000^ |
^ Shipments figures based on certification alone. | ||
| Region | Date | Format | Label | Catalogue |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Australia | 6 May 1996 | EastWest Records | 063014895 | |
| United States of America | 1997 |
| Reprise Records | 946509-2 |
| Australia | 2013 | Valve Records | V130V |
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)