Album Review: Late Night Tales - MGMT

Having filled a gap between the Klaxons' first and (disappointing) second album MGMT's debut album became somewhat of a perfect pop filler. It may not have been nu rave, strictly speaking, but it came from the same jumping off point.

Unfortunately the follow-up left many cold and it now feels a little as though MGMT have come somewhat adrift. I can't help but feel it is unclear what they represent as a band any more.

This compilation in the Late Night Tales series probably won't help. What it will do is help reinforce that, if nothing else, here is a band with some taste. In fact this is a bit of a disconcerting release because it feels so very distant from the band's own material. This is particularly evident on the obligatory exclusive track, a cover of Bauhaus' 'All We Ever Wanted Was Everything', a dusty psychedelic cyclical track that sits midway through the album and is not like anything the band have produced before.

That one track is an appropriate representation of the mix as a whole - both ageing and psychedelic. The Late Night Tales albums usually consist of their fair share of older tracks but this is even more so the case here, with tracks from The Velvet Underground, Suicide, Julian Cope and the Durutti Column amongst others. The mixture of tracks is, however, pretty spectacular. The album opens on Disco Inferno's ghostly and lost sounding 'Can't See Through It' - a track by a band I had not heard before but that perfectly kicks off this floaty, folky mix.

Suicide's 'Cheree' blends in perfectly with the looping waves of melodic distortion, giving the mix a seafaring feel. The Durutti Column's 'For Belgium Friends' is full of tripped out dreamscapes that represent a heavy contrast to the dirty blues of Charlie Feathers' 'Mound of Clay'.

And the contrasts here are worth touching on - the Late Night Tales albums have always attempted to capture those times when it is so past home time that a collective denial is the only path and whilst this captures that feeling, it feels like it comes at the cost of a cohesiveness or any consideration to sequencing. There are beautiful instrumentals that grind harshly against folk music laced with punk and there is a definite lack of progression throughout the album.

But the songs themselves, and the conclusion at home time, are beautiful. And to these ears at least, unknown enough that this probably shouldn't matter. Indeed Dave Bixby's 'Drug Song' is staggering - listening to it you can't help but wonder if he has borrowed a few ideas from Richard Hawley (he hasn't, unless time travel is possible). It is a hard man that doesn't marvel at this kind of songwriting, it is glacially slow, powerless and shot through with pain.

Similarly Spaceman 3's 'Lord Can You Hear Me?' feels like an incredibly fitting close, with massive epic vocals that struggle to be heard over the much more pedestrian guitar work and distortion. It sounds like neurosis and melancholy brought on by a come down that is uncompromisingly brought into stark relief by the realities of morning daylight. And then the album squeezes in one last track, 'Morning Splendor' by Pauline Anna Strom, a touching instrumental of heavy eyelids and the final surrender to sleep.

Messy and ramshackle it is, but for nights lead astray you couldn't find a much more fitting or touching album.

BP x

Late Night Tales selected by MGMT is out now, available from Amazon.co.uk on CD and MP3 [affiliate links].

Album Review: Le Danse - Slove

Slove's 'Do We Need' caught my attention with it's bleached post-punk sound over the summer. The French newcomers' debut, Le Danse, is released soon - could this be another addition to the ever growing list of too cool French bands?

Despite my impression when reviewing 'Do We Need', Slove don't actually have a vocalist. Instead they work with guest vocalists - almost every track on Le Danse features one, and most of them guest on a couple of tracks. It's obviously a well trodden approach amongst British electronic artists (The Chemical Brothers, Groove Armada) and it works well here, adding extra variety to the album's 48-minute length.

There are a number of styles referenced throughout Le Danse, from the Madchester loose funk of the title track to the heavy, electro grind of 'Flash'. the latter's vocal, delivered by Maik, combining with distorted bass to create something cold and clinical yet fragile.

On 'Carte Postale' Anne Laure's spoken word vocal counts in French whilst a simple muted guitar bumps along on a crashing drum track and it is here Slove are at their best. Minimal, structured concept tracks that combine a deft touch with surprising aggression. Similarly, 'Noisy Neige' is wave after wave of distortion with gently hummed vocals, an audio thick shake of rough and smooth.

Le Danse feels tight and, for an album of guest turns, relatively focused - a good thing for a debut. Slove feel like the post-punk Air, which I guess should be a compliment... The only nagging feeling is that you can't escape the thought that we have heard it all before.

BP x

Le Danse is due to be released on 3 October on Pschent.

Album Review: In The Grace Of Your Love - The Rapture

It has been five years since The Rapture's last album and, with the exception of the gloriously funky Timbaland produced 'No Sex For Ben', ages since we heard anything new from Luke Jenner and the band.

The Rapture were one of the first artists to release anything through DFA as a label and were certainly first to release a full album in the form of the DFA produced dark and strung-out yet funky Echoes. It was an album that helped plunge post-punk into the limelight.

But a lot has changed since then. Bassist and vocalist Matty Safer has left the band, they have left and then returned to the label that first broke them and most significantly Jenner's mother sadly tragically suicide, with Jenner having his first child and converting to Catholicism shortly after and.

You can feel the impact of these events on In the Grace of Your Love. Whilst previous album Pieces of the People we Love was carefree and celebratory - a collection of songs about parties, cars and music itself - this feels much more grounded and grown-up. With Jenner's father depicted on the cover seemingly effortlessly standing on a surfboard as he rides a wave it feels like The Rapture are in the same pose - willing themselves to land the moves without seeming to break a sweat.

On the whole they manage it. The album is bookended by polar opposite tracks. Opener 'Sail Away' is ballsy, almost arrogant, as Jenner rides the wave of emotion that the rest of us are seemingly excluded from. Musically it's strident, with soaring keys and a vocal that just feels like a continuous chorus. But it feels a million miles from the relative sophistication of Echoes. Whilst the latter was full of references to Gang of Four 'Sail Away' feels like U2 covered by the Killers. It comes off like a confusing compromise.

If the opener is a million miles from the Rapture we fell in love with then the closing track, 'It Takes Time to be a Man' is equally distant but in another direction. A ballad that sees Jenner openly making his moves whilst simultaneously demonstrating his sensitive side, it's punctuated with a surfer rock baseline, jazz keys and brass. For all the change it is a much more welcome entry into the band's catalogue than 'Sail Away' and packs the kind of album closing gravitas that benefitted the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' 'Maps' on their debut.

Elsewhere things are a bit less contentious. Much of In the Grace of Your Love feels midway between the darker first album and funk of Pieces of the People we Love. 'Miss You' is typically of this - the verses stripped back to little more than a thick drum beat and heavy bass. It feels like a contemporary re-imagining of the Rolling Stones track of the same name, desperation seeping from Jenner's vocals. 'How Deep Is Your Love' takes proto-house and rebuilds it around a brass heavy punk funk number.

'Come Back to Me' is one of the best songs on this record, it's song structure seemingly an inverse of the established norm of starting quiet and building to a crescendo. With a looping, dubby start based around a twisted accordion sound it pulls a handbrake turn halfway through into a dark and foreboding re-imagining of what you have just heard, a minimal house conclusion that works by emphasising an alienated longing for something, anything.

After the partied excess of their last album In the Grace... feels reigned in, but in doing so I can't help but feel that The Rapture have tempered their creativity. Echoes felt packed with ideas and songs the band needed to get out. At times In the Grace of Your Love feels a little bit like that album cover - coasting along with little evidence of the effort that making this album must have taken, particularly given the tumultuous period the band have been through.

BP x

In the Grace of Your Love is out now on DFA, available from Amazon.co.uk on CD, LP and MP3 [affiliate links].

Album Review: Fabric 59 - Jamie Jones

Jamie Jones' album Don't You Remember The Future was reviewed on BlackPlastic.co.uk two years ago and it felt a bit like drinking Diet Coke when we'd rather go all out and fill our gut with The Real Thing. It's an accusation you could level at a fair number of contemporary artists but it's a fair one - who wants to settle for 'not quite as good as...'?

Jones' Fabric album is a bit of a surprise. Firstly because it isn't the fairly minimal tech I've come to expect from artists associated with Crosstown Rebels, the label Jamie calls home. But even more surprising is that fact that it is the most easy-going, celebratory Fabric albums in ages. But this isn't a thinking person's mix - the track listing is pretty obvious - but it's a great collection of disco and house cuts to soundtrack a party to.

There is a mixture of newer and older records on Fabric 59 but Jamie clearly isn't afraid to be obvious. There was a time when finding a new mix album without Felix Da Housecat on it would be more difficult than with. Despite that Jones drops 'Madame Hollywood', from Felix's defining Kittens and Thee Glitz LP, immediately before plunging into the reverb heavy 'Body Shiver' by Waifs & Strays. Thankfully it has been long enough since Felix mania that it just feels great to hear it again. Similarly Metronomy's mix Sebastien Tellier's 'La Ritournelle, shows up in the mix early on.

Fabric 59 is at its best in the closing third. Crazy P's 'Open For Service' is bonkers disco that feels every bit as classic as it aims to, with the most glamorously over the top chorus I've heard in ages. Holy Ghost's mix of 'Goblin City' by Panthers is the show stealer though. It's another track that has been around for an age but it never seems to have quite as much recognition as it deserves. If you haven't heard it you need to and it is here, at eight-minutes long, in pretty much full form. It melds house and disco like champagne and liquid gold, the inevitable guitar solo peak and subsequent break being one of the best things to feature on any Fabric album.

The pace is kept up through to the end. On Oppenheimer Analysis' 'The Devil's Dancers' Jones drops a track that harks back to times when the future sounded like the future rather than the past (just don't tell anyone it's only six years old). Soho808's 'Get Up Disco' is exactly as it says - a gorgeous loose rhythm and sparkling melody - and the stark 'Fear of Numbers' by Footprintz rounds things out.

Fabric 59 is almost in danger of being undermined - Jamie Jones has played it so obviously that it almost veers into parody, yet the final third of the album is so gorgeous I can't help but celebrate it.

BP x

Fabric 59 mixed by Jamie Jones is out now, available from Amazon.co.uk on CD and MP3 [affiliate links].

Album Review: DJ Kicks - Motor City Drum Ensemble

Motor City Drum Ensemble was unknown to me and this DJ Kicks album had totally passed me by until I happened to read about it whilst cavorting (for which read: sitting in the sun) a few weeks back in hot sunny France. It turns out the MCDE is actually Danilo Plessow, who had originally risen to modest fame as Inverse Cinematics. Plessow started working under the guise of Motor City Drum Ensemble when he moved away from the minimal techno sound he favoured as Inverse Cinematics towards a more soulful, disco influenced chicago house sound. 

I've already previously noted that the DJ Kicks albums are on something of a run of late with both the Juan Maclean and Apparat turning in particularly good efforts recently. Generally I only bother picking up on something this late after release if I think it is worth it and this is no different - Motor City Drum Ensemble has made the best mix album I've heard all year.

It is pretty straight forward - Motor City Drum Ensemble doesn't do anything much more complex here than drop together a great selection of tracks, placed them in a brilliant order and then mixed well. It's not rocket science, but it's just exceedingly well done.

Things start laid back, soulful and a little jazzy with numbers from Sun Ra and a lovely remix of Electric Wire Hustle's 'Again' by Scratch 22. It's a doped up, gently perspiring intro that gradually and almost imperceptibly ratchets up to a deeper minimal house climax. Along the way it takes in the echoed disco house of Peven Everett's 'Stuck" and Rick Poppa Howard's glorious simple classical house on 'Can Your Love Find It's Way'. As the latter melds into the squelchy melodies and delicate keys of Stone's 'Girl I Like The Way You Move' you pretty much have the perfect soundtrack for summer - chilling by the pool, warming up for nights out - and it only gets better when Plessow drops Fred P's 'On This Vibe", a beautiful spiralling piano house masterpiece.

Things are considerably harder on the album's second half, with Robert Hood and Philippe Sarde contributing a darker trip into techno, but there are still moments of contrast and sunshine such as the loose and funky Walter Gibbons mix of 'I've Been Searching' by Arts & Crafts. Motor City Drum Ensemble's own 'L.O.V.E' perfectly encapsulates the druggy, loved up feeling of this record - sitting midway between daytime chilled listening and something much more 'peak time' friendly, it's both intimate and sophisticated.

Towards the end things loop back around to a more soulful sound before settling on Timo Lassy's hip swaying hands-in-the-air jazz-soul epic 'African Rumble' on the penultimate track. It draws things in to a beautiful close and I cannot remember a single mix album that ends things so well - Lassy's track is that good.

And that is ultimately all there is to say - Motor City Drum Ensemble's DJ Kicks album is one of the finest mixes I've heard in ages. It has more balls and more ideas than I've heard in every other mix album I've listened to this year and you would struggle to find a more perfect soundtrack to lazy summer days and hot summer evenings. Classy, bold and passionate.

BP x

DJ Kicks - Motor City Drum Ensemble is out now !K7, available from Amazon.co.uk on CD, LP and MP3 [affiliate links].