It's a multiple-personality record: rustic, electronic, kitschy, serious, lush, basic; it traffics in dub, marcha frevo, samba, neo-surf, slow and echoey garage-rock, even a kind of post-tropicalista electric blues (in "Vida Bela," recorded with the band Eek in Maceió).
We think it's a huge step up from the chain's previous and less desirable crust creations, which include a hot dog crust in the U.S. (eek!) and a Doritos crust in Australia (ick).
Today's PC gamer can, if he so desires, spend $700 on a video card in order to eek out a few more frames per second in the latest first-person shooter.
Last October, during the now 10-year-old Dutch Design Week, hosted in Eindhoven, Mr. Eek celebrated the opening of his vast new headquarters in the Strijp-R, a series of industrial brick buildings that used to house the Philips ceramic factory.
Only this week I accidentally sent out an "xx" to a senior colleague, wrote out a sentence to news editors in shouty capital letters (only to follow up with an equally unnecessary apology), and even typed "eek!" in an email to the most senior person in the organisation.
Her store, Song (Praterstrasse 11-13; 43-1-532-28-58; song.at), sells avant-garde fashion by the likes of Balenciaga as well as furnishings by the Dutch designer Piet Hein Eek in a vast industrial space that includes a gallery.
"Dear Endometriosis: screw you," it began, as if the disease were a pesky cartoon character who would receive this message, emit the word "Eek!" in a speech bubble, then turn on tail and run.
Receiving its English premiere in Jamie Lloyd's rumbustiously enjoyable production, the show pitches us Brits into the arcane alien rituals and anthropological bizarreries of the kind of tortuous, torturing contest for teenagers that seems designed to put the "eek!" in "geek".
/ skillful at evil schemes, cunning; a currently fashionable, hands-on aesthetic often employing salvaged materials that tends to draw attention to its own resourcefulness, as in, "Piet Hein Eek's scrap-wood cabinets are truly artisanal, but Martino Gamper's tables and chairs made from recycled Gio Ponti hotel furniture take crafty to a whole new level".
I would get a hand-delivered package on Tuesday afternoon with the DVD, and then sat on the edge of my seat watching it, in fear, thinking "Eek, what's coming".
