| Tu-Plang | |
| Type: | studio |
| Artist: | Regurgitator |
| Cover: | Regurgitator-Tu-plang.jpg |
| Released: | 6 May 1996 |
| Recorded: | Sunshine Studio & Red Zeds, Brisbane, February 1996; Center Stage Studios, Bangkok, Thailand, March 1996[1] |
| Length: | 40:58 |
| Label: | East West/WEA Australia 0630-14895 Reprise/Warner Bros. (US) 46509 |
| Producer: | Magoo |
| Prev Title: | New |
| Prev Year: | 1995 |
| Next Title: | Unit |
| Next Year: | 1997 |
Tu-Plang (ตู้เพลง Thai for Jukebox) is the first album released by Australian rock band Regurgitator. After making two EPs, the band chose to record the album in Bangkok, Thailand, to the quandary of its label, Warner Music, which was uncertain as to what terms A&R executive Michael Parisi had contracted.[2] 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."[3]
Producer Magoo 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."[4]
At the ARIA Music Awards of 1996, the album won two awards; Best Alternative Album and Breakthrough Artist - Album.
In 2012, Regurgitator performed the entire album along with Unit on the Australian RetroTech tour.
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 la Dick 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."[5] The Age said 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.[6] They later voted Tu-Plang as one of the greatest albums from the first 50 years of Australian music.[7]
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."[8]
| 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 | |