In anime and gaming parlance, mecha are giant humanoid robots controlled by human pilots; think Transformers. Kaiju are enormous monsters spawned by radiation; think Godzilla. See? It's really very simple. This album is billed as being appropriate background music for gaming sessions involving intrepid mecha pilots encased in their colossal war machines, defending Japanese citizens against huge radioactive monsters. Wipe that grin off your face; I know you have a copy of Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots in your CD collection, fanboy.

Nearly half the tracks here were originally written as promotional pieces for Go Hero, LLC. Two of these, "Go Bot Go" and "Terror Strike," appeared on their first monster-inspired compilation CD, Kaijuice.

The disk opens up with a short 0:38 fanfare track—something similar to what you'd find in the beginning of a Japanese monster movie. The track is titled "Bailey Records Fanfare (MVK Mix)," so presumably other versions exist.

Track 2, "Go Bot Go," is much more in Stratos' regular style, being a rapid, machinelike piece and eminently toe-tappable. Floating over the top of this cut is a keyboard figure that's reminiscent of Telstar by the Tornadoes.

Track 3, "Kaiju Kometh," begins with an ominous figure that has an industrial patch laid over it, playing a sketchy melody. Given the way Stratos builds his tracks, he pays rather more attention to the melody than one might expect. Still, there are no solos here as a rock musician would understand the term. Another issue that surfaces here from time to time is that it's hard to get tracked-in percussion to lead or lag the beat unless the sample in use has that sort of timing. Having everything dead-on can result in a lifeless rigidity to the beat, but this very rarely happens in Stratos' work.

Offbeat and not off-the-shelf

Track 4, "Lock on Target," is slower and more meditative. It has some really nice low tones. If you're just listening to this on crummy computer speakers you should put the disk into your stereo, because Stratos is giving you a lot of good bass work that you're just not going to get unless you've got a subwoofer. Stratos gets a cool Euro hip-hop groove going here and uses a vocoder to good effect.

"Terror Strike," Track 5, is a standout. Here Stratos sounds like Art of Noise. My one complaint with the track is that the flute sample is overused to the extent of getting a bit monotonous. This is a problem that doesn't mar another favorite track of mine, "Evil Devastations," Track 7. This one opens with a dark keyboard figure and then segues into a finger-drum sample, a rather disturbing sound. Stratos wisely does not carry it out throughout the song, but he brings it back now and then for emphasis.

Track 9 starts with world-beat percussion and then gets increasingly busy before a koto sample comes in, as repetitive of the flute on "Terror Strike" but more appropriate in its setting, and less aggravating as a result.

There a couple of remixes in the set, these being done by the artist's friend Captain Futura. They're interesting and well done, if not particularly "dangerous." One of them, Track 16, "Android Hunter," is the most mechanistic piece on the disk. On the whole it's more successful than Track 14, "Space Jaunt," which is a Captain Futura remix of Track 9.