Album Review: Beatdown - Various mixed by Scratch Perverts

BlackPlastic always says that if you own just one hip-hop album then it should be the compilation album Hip-Hop Don't Stop: The Greatest. Across two discs Scratch Perverts member Prime Cuts manages to create an inventive mix of pretty much every vital old school hip-hop record in existence. It features some of the best mixing BlackPlastic has ever heard, let alone heard committed to record.

As such BlackPlastic holds a bit of a soft one for the Scratch Perverts and was pleased to slip Beatdown, inspired by the Perverts hosted night at Fabric, into the CD player.

Beatdown: eclectic, knob on, pedal to the floor. This mix certainly isn't backwards in coming forward - there are 37 tracks throughout this 65 minute mix and as a result some great moments are pretty much guaranteed - the Martyn's Heartbeat Mix of Flying Lotus' 'Roberta Flack', for example.

Sadly they are just too few and far between and there is far too much that feels like it is only here because it is currently en vogue. As a whole it's a full on party style mix and Scratch Perverts have made much of the fact that they still play contemporary, current selections, boasting the fact that the mix is modern and has plenty of dub-step...

...So here is the thing: dub-step is whack music for lame-o middle-aged urban wannabees. That includes Burial. Oh, and whilst we are sacrificing the sacred cows of the late 'noughties': Zomby (who features on Beatdown) is shit too.

So ultimately what BlackPlastic is saying is it doesn't matter if the mixing is fab and the track listing 'current': if the tunes don't stack up, they don't stack up. Just because your genre of choice is British and involves breakbeats it doesn't make it any good.  BlackPlastic would take Hip-Hop Don't Stop any day.

BP x

Available now - order on CD on Amazon.co.uk [affiliate link].

Album Review: Still Night, Still Light - Au Revoir Simone

BlackPlastic has a whopping crush on the delicate harmonies and wandering Casio keyboards of Au Revoir Simone. They manage to capture the feeling of waking up alone from a dream spent with a loved one whilst sounding like the soundtrack to an un-made Sofia Copolla film (more Virgin Suicides, less Marie Antoinette).

Fundamentally Still Night, Still Light is more of the same but we will let that slide when the same sounds so beautiful. The sound is actually somewhere between the ice-cold tunes of mini-album début Verses of Comfort Assurance and Salvation and the girl geek pop of second album The Bird of Music and it's a haunting position they occupy, whether on the jangly 'All Or Nothing' or the lonely, scared yet brave 'The Last One'.

Still Night, Still Light looms out of the dark like a betrayed friend and steals your heart and favourite t-shirt before running off, only ever to be seen again in the faces of strangers. It's a peculiarly familiar album and the hooks often sound like you have already heard them yet you can't help but still feel touched by the vulnerability - everything feels like it has been made of crate paper an sticky tape, the equivalent of a hand-made Valentine's card: all the more powerful for the fact.

Au Revoir Simone may not be able to get away with sounding so familiar forever. Maybe they will have to change in order to stay fresh. All BlackPlastic can say is grab this and hold it close because if the world damages Au Revoir Simone it is because the world is too rough, not them too soft.

BP x

Still Night, Still Light is out now.  Order it on CD or MP3 from Amazon.co.uk [affiliate links].

Album Review: KNIIFE PRRTY - KNIIFE PRRTY

KNIIFE PRRTY's début conjures a mixture of musical influences, sounding like the Go Find performing Depeche Mode songs on a rainy day. Far from the raucous event their name infers, this is an album of slow contemplation and slightly emo American vocals.

It makes a couple of missteps - occasionally it simply doesn't sound distinctive enough, as on the opening tracks 'Neil Diamond' and 'Wretched Heart'. Steve Pahl's vocals don't really stand up to close scrutiny - sounding like Ben Gibbard but without the feeling the result is a little over-polished in places.

Things are better where the music gets more creative. The stuttering rhythms of 'Pins Down' with its snatched vocals sounds like it was captured by a computer and evolved in isolation from human involvement. 'Change Your Mind' succeeds despite the focus on the vocals because the slower pace better suits their maudlin, somewhat apathetic nature whilst juxtapositioning threatening vocals with a voice that sounds incapable of delivering a bad word.

When KNIIFE PRRTY stop wearing their influences on their sleeve is when thing get genuinely interesting. The spoken delivery of 'Morning Nausea' with it's slow, dubby backing sounds like an American take on Massive Attack.

KNIIFE PRRTY have delivered a début that intrigues in places but ultimately fails to sustain interest. If they leave the angst and instead focus on emotion they could be ones to watch.

BP x

Check out KNIIFE PRRTY on their MySpace.

Avaliable now on Amazon.co.uk on MP3 [affiliate link].

Album Review: Beacons of Ancestorship - Tortoise

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

Album Review: Manners - Passion Pit

BlackPlastic has slept on this one a little - there has been a lot to cover but you generally know when we come back to something that has been out a while it is usually because it is worth it.

Manners is so up our street that if it was any more to our tastes it would be less living in our house, more peeking round the bedroom door trying to tempt us into a bit of nooky. An insatiably perky band, Passion Pit sound like Lo Fi Fnk force fed Coca-Cola with an added teaspoon of sugar once per minute until they could write a whole album. Much like Iceland's FM Belfast this is a band that mash together the sweetest elements of a few different bands - BlackPlastic is thinking the Spinto Band, Shout Out Louds and the Go! Team - and come out smelling of cotton candy.

Take 'Little Secrets' - with it's chorus of children singing it should by all rights be a disaster. Instead it is a glorious, awesome motivational cheer-leading anthem. 'The Reeling' is equaly glorious - like a first kiss, a holiday and a rollercoaster all in one - whilst 'Sleepyhead' sounds like the Avalanches trapped in a tropical snow globe.  That's a good thing.

And every single track here is like a beautiful day that sticks in your belly like a thorn because you know that you can't keep it up. Passion Pit may struggle to continue making music as joyful as that on Manners but BlackPlastic is sure looking forward to hearing them try.

It's simple really. Joyous electronic pop: In the words of Vin Diesel in xXx we live for this shit.

Available on Amazon.co.uk on CD, LP and MP3 [affiliate links].

BP x