In Evening Air is Future Islands' first release for Thrill Jockey and their first album to be released as a slimmed down three-piece.

Opening with 'Walking Through That Door' In Evening Air is a captivating listen from the off. It is an album with a beautiful dream-like quality that manages to take disparate reference points and brings them together beautifully.

The vocals alternate between gravelly Dylan ('Long Flight') and statuesque Bowie ("Swept Aside"). And that isn't all - In Evening Air is in turns ethereal (on the title track - think David Lynch and Twin Peaks) and youthful and overwhelmed (reminiscent of Sofia Coppola on the beautiful "Long Flight").

There are clear nods to on In Evening Air to post-punk, particularly Joy Division and Echo and the Bunnymen, and the electronics and emotional punch are pure New Wave. It's little surprise then that Future Islands refer to their own sound as Post-Wave.

But In Evening Air is more than the sum of its parts though. Future Islands sound urgent and insistent and, frankly, desperately delicate. There is so much to soak in across this album's short length that it already feels like an early high-water mark for the year.  Seek it out.

BP x

In Evening Air is released on 4 May on Thrill Jockey, available for pre-order at Amazon.co.uk [affiliate link]. 

Tunng's new album greets listeners like a long lost friend coming in and giving you a big romantic passionate kiss. ...And Then We Saw Land's opening track 'Hustle' is so infectious that offering it upfront without the listener having put in any effort whatsoever feels like a treat akin to early payday in December.

The problem with early pay is that it leaves you feeling short-changed in January as the weeks drag on. BlackPlastic wouldn't go so far as to acuse Tunng of giving us the same feeling but the tone and pace of the album innevitably dips from this heady start.

Yet ...And Then We Saw Land is a lovely piece of melodic folk music that manages to contain electronic flourishes and reflects elements of anti-folk in it's lo-fi feel and the likes of múm in its playfulness. And when it works it really bloody works: 'The Roadside', for example, features a fantastic wandering, almost meandering introduction and builds in a lovely cinematic fashion.

So Tunng's album is by no means a mixed bag - it just has some good bits and some utterly sublime bits, like on that album opener or the stop-start rhymic vocals of 'Sashimi'. ...And Then We Saw Land is a grand day out of a record. A joyful, joyful experience - it feels like a car journey at the beginning of a holiday.

Download 'Don't Look Down Or Back' on MP3 by Tunng, taken from ...And Then We Saw Land [right click, save as].

BP x

...And Then We Saw Land is out on tomorrow, available from Amazon.co.uk on CD, LP and MP3 [affiliate links].

Boca Negra - it evokes foreign places, exoticism and, meaning "black mouth" evokes feelings of infinity (it apparently represents an endless consumption of information). And Chicago Underground Duo sound like they should have made house music back when house was a place not a genre.

They don't, however. But Boca Negra is no less exciting for that fact. Instead it is just too damn cool, Chicago Underground Duo's sounds creating an effortless yet sophisticated and ultimately considered melange.

Chicago Underground Duo's album is ultimately a free-jazz-folk-music affair. Yet if, as they say, writing about music is as stupid as dancing about architecture then you could argue that assigning a genre to music like this feels as ridiculous as skydiving about partical physics.

What there is no argument over is the fact that Boca Negra is a beautiful record. Whether soothing, as on the refined and soulful 'Vergence', or obtuse, funky and playful as on 'Spy On The Floor' it is a shattered picture frame of enticing images. In some respects it is a collection of mood pieces but played with such aplomb, such attention to detail that it sounds like the soundtrack to the best movie you have never seen.

Boca Negra is a cinematic album and it is at its best when full of the space and exposed, broken rhythms as on 'Lauging With The Sun'. Like much great instramental music different people will feel different things from listening to Chicago Underground Duo: BlackPlastic feels a sense of wonderment.

BP x

Preview Chicago Underground Duo's Boca Negra by downloading the MP3 of 'Spy On The Floor' [right click, save as].

Boca Negra is out now on Thrill Jockey, available from Amazon.co.uk on CD and LP [affiliate links].

Pit Er Pat's latest album is new, entitled The Flexible Entertainer and not particularly easy to sum up in a catchy soundbite at the start of a review.

Pit Er Pat's thing has always been about the atmospherics, moods and textures of their sound and this record is no different. Written for live performance on tour in Europe and later laid down in the studio it is uncompromisingly angular. The sound picks up where Gang Gang Dance's Saint Dymphna and Telepath's Dance Mother left off, carving out a rhythm from non congruent sounds.

The difference is that there is no relief. There is no pay-off. Where Saint Dymphna blows a gasket under the pressure and album-highlight 'Vacuum' sweeps in like a desert oasis, spacious and forgiving to the tracks it follows, The Flexible Entertainer just keeps on piling it on. Where Gang Gang Dance make pop music with Tinchy Stryder on 'Princes' Pit Er Pat feel far too po-faced to play with what their music could be. There are hints of R'n'B in 'Water' and the first half of 'Emperor of Charms' shines but it isn't enough.

The Flexible Entertainer is a record that thinks it is far cleverer than it really is. Snapshots intrigue but sustained listening suffocates.

Download 'Water' by Pit Er Pat on MP3 [right click, save as].

BP x

The Flexible Entertainer is out on Thrill Jockey on Monday, it is available for pre-order now from Amazon.co.uk on CD [affiliate link].

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

An appropriate proverb when faced with the prospect of reviewing Radian's album Chimeric. From the opening distorted clicks and buzzes of 'Git Cut Noise' it is a thoroughly opaque listen. Disorientating and disturbed it is difficult to describe and, in all honesty, even more difficult to like.

Chimeric is, in essence, an avante-guarde slice of left-field experimentation. BlackPlastic would struggle to call much of it music and, if we are struggling, that doesn't bode well or many other people.

Radian have created an interesting piece of art here but we can't help but feel a little too much like they are attempting to school us. There is just no relief and no contrast and the result makes the album's relatively short 40-minute length feel a lot longer.

BP x

Chimeric is released on Thrill Jockey on 16 November, available for pre-order on Amazon.co.uk on CD and LP.

What happens if you mix Gang Gang Dance's distorted and shattered take on urban music and melt it down with the Battles and Asa Chung & Junray?

Something like this. A unhinged, disjointed piece of post-math-rock.

And to listen to it is to hear one of the strangest records BlackPlastic has heard in a while. Scat vocals, yelps, acid... African percussion...

Basically Arminico Hewa is every passing fad of the past couple of years played at once. Up close it is all far too much and BlackPlastic certainly wouldn't recommend playing it on a first date or listening to it whilst you sleep (unless you, your partner, or both are mental) but take a step back and it is kind of beautiful: Free of form or structure. So base it really underlines the similarity between humans and animals - just try listening to 'Irorun' and you will see what we mean.

So weird and full-on in might make you puke. Which is kind of awesome in our book.

BP x

Arminico Hewa is out on 2 November on Thrill Jockey, available for order now on Amazon.co.uk on CD and LP [affiliate links].

The Fiery Furnaces have always felt like a band that like to do things the hard way just for the sake of it. From their days of performing every concert in a different genre-style through to this, their sixth album.

Because individually these song are glorious slices of pop music. 'Drive to Dallas' sounds like the White Stripes at the top of their game - a relaxed soul-country-ballad that descends into a freak-out midway through. Yet BlackPlastic can't help but feel their is too much on I'm Going Away and far too much of it sounds far too similar.

Consumed in sections it is, undeniably, great. If nothing else I'm Going Away proves that The Fiery Furnaces can write some of the best songs about relationships breaking down you will ever have heard. Take the horizontal blues of 'The End Is Near' or 'Even In The Rain' - the song writing is generally strong but as an album it needs a few of the weaker efforts thrown out and replacing with something totally different.

It's a shame because this is a band that have long since demonstrated their aptitude at variety and experimentalism - just take a handful of tracks from different releases and you will experience a wealth of different styles. As a result it almost feels like the Fiery Furnaces are laughing at us the listeners with this one, a classic case of the emperor's new clothes - is there really nothing to this beyond a few blues-soul pop songs or are is BlackPlastic just too dumb to get it?

Regardless, if you are fan there is likely to be enough here to interest you. Unfortunately if you have long been alienated by the Fiery Furnaces' deliberate attempts to be a difficult listen this is not likely to change your mind.

BP x

Out on Thrill Jockey on 24 August 2009. Available for pre-order at Amazon.co.uk on CD and LP [affiliate links].

Some years in the making, Tortoise's seventh album proper (and their first proper release in five years) kicks off with a certain swagger. 'High Class Slim Came Floatin' In' sounds like David Holmes at his best - timeless yet wearing contemporary inspiration loud and proud.

The rest of Beacons of Ancestorship maintains a similar vibe, giving the whole album a highly cinematic feel. There are the abstract, rhythmic noodlings of 'Gigantes', the tight funk of 'Northern Something' - every track feels like a soundtrack to a different film. It, much like the rest of Tortoise's catalogue, may initially feel difficult to penetrate but once you stop actively LISTENING you start to appreciate its spaces and spikey, angular left-turns.

Instrumental music tends to fall into two categories - that which suffers from a slight lack of emotion (minimal, techno) and that which boarders on melodramatic (Sigur Rós, trance music generally). Beacons of Ancestorship ultimately falls into the former category and that is a fact that will undoubtedly act as a barrier to anyone that hasn't experienced Tortoise's music before, but in focusing on the music itself Tortoise manage to capture more depth and texture than most.

Beacons of Ancestorship is an album of different vibes and moments. The smokey, moody last chance saloon of 'The Fall of Seven Diamonds Plus One' for example may take more work but the feelings it evokes clearly warrant the investment.

Hop in the car, roll down the window, stick this in the stereo and go on a roadtrip. Beacons of Ancestorship is a weird, twisted, dangerous adventure.

Beacons of Ancestorship is available now on Thrill Jockey.  Order from Amazon.co.uk on CD or LP [affiliate link].

BP x

BlackPlastic doesn't really like 'metal' anymore. Maybe once, but not anymore.

Some records, however, get lumped into this genre and yet transcend them. Test Icicles violent punk metal may have taken inspiration from metal bands but it also took inspiration from grime and disco. Similarly, Death From Above 1979's only album often got classed as metal but it did much more.

The same is true of Double Dagger's latest album, More.  Double Dagger's third album, it was created in an abandoned office on the fifth floor of a building housing Baltimore's Current Gallery (an artist run gallery and studio space). With everything above the third floor in a state of disrepair the band had to run cables out of the windows and down to the lower floors to power their mics and instruments and they relied on ceiling tiles and cubicle dividers to create soundproofing whilst the band's drummer, Denny Bowen, set up the drums in a separate room but then knocked a hole through the wall so the band could still see each other.

Less than glamorous the conditions may have been but they did enable a longer recording time and, with the inclusion of a few cheap microphones, gave the recording a fantastically rough and distorted sound. Combining metal with the stripped back minimalist percussion and basslines of early post-punk, the experimentalism of the Pixies and vocals that sound like Hold Steady's Craig Finn on a rampage, Double Dagger are the hardcore metal band BlackPlastic can like.

And that's because beyond the initial abrasiveness there is an ear for melody that transforms these songs. Just check the chorus of 'No Allies' - the vocals may try and shout you down but the hooks are irrestibly catchy. There's a lovely clash of sounds on this album and it's like listening to a metal album made by someone who just can't help but make catchy tunes - again this is demonstrated perfectly by the spoken intro and punchy chorus of 'The Lie/The Truth'.

Don't be put off by the shouts and the labels. A single listen to More proves that Double Dagger have made an album that achieves much more than anything by any band concerned with genres could - it might be hardcore, it might be noisy pop... BlackPlastic doesn't care, it's just awesome.

We have a copy of 'The Lie/The Truth' available to download here (right click, save as) - if you like it check out the album. More is released on 3 May on Thrill Jockey. Pre-order from Amazon.co.uk on CD or LP .

BP x

Mountains is Brendon Anderegg and Koen Holtkamp and Choral is their third album and marks a watershed as it is the first not to be released on their own Apestaartje label, but on Thrill Jockey. Ambient in nature, Choral takes it's cues from Eno and post-rock in an effort to create a serene, emotive sounscape that could be the soundtrack to a Alejandro González Iñárritu movie - it has that same feeling of chaos in slow motion.

And the understated, slow-moving sounds are beautiful.  What is perhaps more surprising however is that they pack an emotional punch and a degree of technical brilliance too.  It might be easy to make music to visit the spa to - all new age imagery incorporating the sounds of nature - but to aliken Choral to that would be to cheapen it.  The sparse us of guitar and the melodic patterns give the album a level of emotional gravitas that can be all to easy to lose in ambient music and the technical brilliance is obvious - much of Chorals was done using no overdubs and when they were used it was to add a larger, choral sound.  Sounds of nature have been incorporated - Telescope for example features the sounds of a thunder storm - but these have been utilised in a way that makes them simply another musical instrument that Mountains have at their disposal, the origin of the sound disguised behind layers of sound.

Relaxing, considered and defined by space, yes but boring never - Choral is a beautiful piece of work.  You can download an MP3 of the opening (title) track here (right click - save as).

BP x