VIVA! LA WOMAN includes a brief, unlisted 11th track.

Cibo Matto: Miho Hatori (vocals, percussion); Yuka Honda (guitar, keyboards, programming).

Additional personnel: Rick Lee (horns); Bernie Worrell (organ); Dougie Bowne (percussion); Marc Ribot, Dave Douglas, Joshua Roseman, Jay Rodriguez, Marc Anthony Thompson, Tchad Blake, Tin Boys.

Producers: Mitchell Froom, Tchad Blake, Cibo Matto.

Engineers: Tchad Blake, Yuka Honda.

Dinner is being served! And this female duo of food-obsessed, Japanese expatriates turned Lower East Side art-punk-trip-hoppers has cooked up an eclectic 10-song aural banquet, carefully prepared with a variety of samples, instruments, loops and beats to satiate even the most discriminating palate. Cibo Matto's name is based on an Italian b-movie, and roughly translates as "food crazy." Accordingly, every song on VIVA! LA WOMAN has a food reference at its core.

Flavored with a heavy Japanese accent, Miho Hatori's vocals range from sensual ("White Pepper Ice Cream") to punk rantings ("Birthday Cake") to rap ("Le Pain Perdu"). Meanwhile, the wasabe-like spiciness of Yuka Honda's sampler provides the tasty, sonic morsels that make this meal sumptuous. Samples as diverse as Duke Ellington's "Caravan" and Paul Weller's "Hung Up" are interspersed throughout. Add to these ingredients the talents of master chefs/producers Mitchell Froom and Tchad Blake, virtuoso guest stars like Funkadelic keyboardist Bernie Worrell and members of the Lounge Lizards and Masada, and you have one superlative, five-star feast.

Spin (9/99, p.164) - Ranked #90 in Spin Magazine's "90 Greatest Albums of the '90s."

Spin (1/97, p.58) - Ranked #10 on Spin's list of the "20 Best Albums of '96."

Spin (2/96, p.84) - 9 (out of 10) - "...Yuka Honda's dub-influenced sampling melts and melds different types of white noise...and echoes a global mix of instruments....VIVA! LA WOMAN is [also] a romantic comedy..."

Entertainment Weekly (1/26/96, p.58) - "...sonic savants who go nutty mixing disparate ingredients, like avant-garde trumpet with bossa nova bass lines and sugary non-sequitur lyrics....kitschy club music, as kooky and lovable as Hello Kitty." - Rating: A-

Option (3-4/96, p.97) - "...Cibo Matto has spun its oddball vision and limited technical prowess into creative gold, rocketing from East Village obscurity to high-concept product in record time..."

Melody Maker (3/30/96, p.40) - Recommended - "...Cool, smart and deeply deeply funky....Just lucky, I guess..."

Village Voice (2/25/97) - Ranked #27 in the Village Voice's 1996 Pazz & Jop Critics' Poll.

Mojo (Publisher) (6/96, p.122) - "...VIVA! LA WOMAN is...bulging with off-the-wall ideas and strategies....the songs are well-crafted ruminations on desire and dinner - what could possibly be more attractive than that?"