Album Review: How To Skin A Ghost - Gypsy Death Star

If Hurts are like a bunch of eighties boy band wannabe losers - more Savage Garden than Tears For Fears - then Gypsy Death Star is the real deal. The alter ego of Wyatt Hull and Cesar Augusto, Gypsy Death Star's sound is somewhere between eighties new romanticism and modern IDM. Album opener 'Throwing Hail Marys' buzzes and sparks with throbbing bass and atmospherics. 'Wax & Wane' turns up twice, once in the form of a slow, ominous ambient piece on the 'WarriorMix' and again, closing the album as the 'Original ix', this time with more of a beat, if only just. 'Heavenly Asylum' is distorted and fractured with a fuzzy melody that veers close to sounding 8bit. The highlight has to be 'Shake Down', with its distorted guitar picking its way through the intro before the manipulated vocals insist on telling us just how bloody lovely and adorable we are. By the chorus serenade, complete with a lovely 'everybody join-in' "ooh oooooh" bit, it is a wonder the subject of the song was clearly such a bitch. Because if this is anything to go by Gypsy Death Star must be pretty lovely. And it only works because this unashamedly 'pop' moment stands in isolation on what is otherwise a short and relatively reserved album. How To Skin A Ghost feels very much like an introduction rather than the realisation of all of Gypsy Death Star's ideas and for that we should be grateful. BP x How To Skin A Ghost is out now on Earth Delivery Records, available from Amazon.co.uk on MP3 [affiliate link]. For more information on Gypsy Death Star visit the official site.

Album Review: Black City - Matthew Dear

Sometimes Matthew Dear makes glitch. Sometimes he makes techno. Sometimes he just makes insanity. And increasingly he appears to be favouring the latter.

Sometimes Matthew Dear makes glitch. Sometimes he makes techno. Sometimes he just makes insanity. And increasingly he appears to be favouring the latter.

Following up on his first two albums, Leave Luck to Heaven and Backstroke, Asa Breed was a startling revelation. As much pop as dance, in places tender and wounded and in others aloof and lyrically impenetrable. And since BlackPlastic is ultimately often fond of music that requires a bit of thought, it was one of those albums that we kept coming back to.

Black City is as the title implies - a dark journey through a nighttime urban sprawl inside Dear's mind. It's a darker affair that culminates in the sordid workout of album centrepiece and highlight, the fantastically titled 'You Put A Smell On Me'. Dear's vocals are hardly robust but when he tweaks them in the right way, as he does here - "I'm gonna try you on, and exercise" - he nails his 'thing' somewhere south of sub-zero on the cool wall.

So if you hadn't already guessed, Black City is at times a touch sordid. Whilst nothing touches the mechanical sleazy genius of 'You Put A Smell On Me' in terms of pure filth there is a vibe of sex and alienation that runs throughout the album. 'I Can't Feel' sounds like serial copulation carried out in in a bid to feel something, anything, and as the album progresses the it feels increasingly like a commentary on the instant-gratification-based but veil-thin nature of modern society.

Album closer 'Gem' really nails it, revealing Dear's apparent confusion and isolation. Over a ballad, the vocals are a modest and understated cry for help and attention:

All of my sad songs can't make you change,

They'll just keep pushing you further away.

One of your great regrets will be staying in place,

I can't hold you back from your dreams.

When you figure out what's real I'll be standing here,

A little bit older but forgiving as the night of the day.

In today's modern world it's difficult not to feel a certain empathy with Dear's confusion. Black City not only builds on what Asa Breed achieved - it establishes Dear as a song writer up there with some of the best. This is music to make you dance, think and feel.

BP x

Black City is out now on Ghostly International, available from Amazon.co.uk on CD, LP and MP3 [affiliate links].

Album Review: How To Live - Seeland

Seeland's sophomore album kicks off in spectacular fashion with 'Black Dot, White Spider'. Like hitting the ground running, the percussive krautrock rhythms set the pace for much of what follows.

Which isn't to say How To Live is a krautrock album, sadly it isn't - for 'Black Dot, White Spider' easily stands out as the highlight. But what How To Live does carry from those opening moments is the manner in which it fully embraces melancholy, wrapping itself up in it like a warm blanket.

Electronic music that genuinely captures emotion is relatively rare, that which captures the doldrums even rarer. And Seeland manage it with aplomb. 'Afterthoughts' is a delicious cruise through the uncontrollable feeling that is the wonder of hindsight. Title track 'How To Live' feels like an instruction manual for the lost that proves that, ultimately, none of us really know.

This could all be too much. The album's closer 'Been So Long' ends things on a pean to someone who clearly got away and admittedly if it went on any longer How To Live would be in danger of being suffocatingly down. But this isn't proper depressed music, it's just mildly fed up. And at 35 minutes it actually feels like a perfect little Autumn wallow: put on, get bummed out, then man-up and move on.

BP x

How To Live is released on LOAF on 13 September, available for pre-order from Amazon.co.uk on CD and MP3 [affiliate links].

Album Review: Vulgarian Knights - Feindrehstar

Out on German label Musik Krause and distributed via Kompakt, Vulgarian Knights marks a contrast to anything Kompakt would normally get involved in and is a long way from the German minimal you may be envisaging. Whilst there is a swagger in the sound this is about as far from Kompakt's minimal and ambient goodness as you can get.

Vulgarian Knights is actually a collection of funk and soul jams, albeit laced with a slighty dubby and acidic undertone, and is likely to appeal to fans of Jazzanova. At times it feels close to hip-hop but there is always enough pace for this to be an album that will still get people moving. Feindrehstar have actually existed for ten years as a seven-piece acoustic live act - despite this Vulgarian Knights marks their debut album release.

And ultimately it is slightly beard-y exoticism, which is all well and good, but things are at their best when Feindrehstar mix things up a little. Where opener 'Knochenbrecher' feels just a little too formulaic the more playful sound and samples of 'Fete De La Kita' shine much brighter, the break boasting a lovely warm jazzy brass moment. In terms of a modern take on Fela Kuti, it actually reminds BlackPlastic of Common's tribute to Fela, 'Time Travellin'', which in our opinion is high praise indeed.

And Fela is clearly an inspiration - he gets his own dedicated track here in the form of 'Fela Fresh' - and the adventurous freeform approach and use of Afrobeat works well in combination with the uptempo, dance floor friendly sound.

Just short enough that it leaves before it out-stays it's welcome, Vulgarian Knights goes out on a high note - the much more laid back, contemplative lounge jazz of 'Happy Hour'. Letting the music really breath over the first five minutes before diving into a faster tempo. It proves that, actually, Feindrehstar can do it all in one track when they feel like it - and it is a shame they don't a bit more often.

Download Vulgarian Knights (Maxi Version) on MP3 for free [right click, save as].

BP x

Vulgarian Knights is out on Musik Krause on 6 September, available for pre-order from Amazon.co.uk on CD, LP and MP3 [affiliate links].

Album review: Wave and Cloud - The Whiskey Priest

As The Whiskey Priest, musician Seth Woods (along with friend Alex "Hooch" Dupree) has managed to make something truly beautiful here. For BlackPlastic, opener 'A Seafarer's Lament' totally captures the feeling of the void that fills the room when the person you love leaves it. It is the sound of a man at the mercy of his feelings - a statement that the way you feel about someone is beyond your control. You would do as well to try and change the seasons or the passing of night and day as you would choose to stop loving someone.

So from the start Wave and Cloud has a level of raw emotional impact that it is simply not possible to ignore. If 'A Seafarer's Lament' is a powerful start to an album then second track 'If a Train Was a Doctor Was a Song' is a small miracle - it manages to calm down the fire in the belly and yet still sports a heart so big on its sleeve the it must almost be physically weighing down Woods down. With an opening line like "If I was a train I would carry you along" it is pretty clear that Wave and Cloud is a gift in the form of music - it feels like Woods would be prepared to give the shirt off his back and more to the subject of his music.

But this isn't an album of passive, yet gutsy ballads - witness the defiant country stomp of 'No Man is an Island (But Me)', where The Whiskey Priest may be left wanting but certainly ain't going to buckle to demands. It's a lovely poke in the eye to the wistful romance the pervades other parts of the album. Similarly 'All The Way Back' feels like a triumphant bar room singalong and you can't help but wish you were somewhere with sawdust on the floor, bourbon in hand and a stage too small for the band's sounds so you could join in.

There has been a bit of a renaissance in recent years in honest country and folk based sing-songwriter music. Some of it is good and some of it bad and some of it just slept-on. Wave and Cloud may well end up being that latter, but one thing is for sure - it certainly wouldn't fit in the second category. This is the kind of honest, and unfussy music that is just to frank and beautiful to not love. If 2008 belonged to Bon Iver, then The Whiskey Priest deserves 2010.

BP x

Wave and Cloud is out on Rainboot today, available from Amazon.co.uk on CD [affiliate link].