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

Album Review: Lumina - The Rogue Element

Coming from the same school of thought as Simian Mobile Disco and Justice but without the pop hooks, Lumina is the aka Ben Medcalf's second album as Rogue Element and having had a listen it is difficult to understand why he isn't better known.

Lumina for the most delivers a noisy, bombastic, swinging-from-the-chandaliers style party and from the opening title track it sounds like the sound Simian Mobile Disco are aiming for with their second album. There a vicious stabs of acid and swirling synthesizers in a combination that defies easy categorisation. All BlackPlastic can say is that it has elements of techno and even trance but that it's still definitely house music.

Regardless of how you label it, this is music to lose memories to. 'Binary Suite', 'Sidewinder' and 'Lumina' are all full on brilliant technicolor brain-seizures. And when Lumina isn't swinging from the chandeliers things get even better - the broken beats of 'In Place' build to a distorted climax whilst 'Mistakes', the only track with a proper vocal, is the album's highlight. It's slower than the rest of the album but builds and builds into a magnificent electro-ballad, all snappy beats and distorted melodies.

Lumina is a triumphant record - an album that manages to be accessible without any danger of selling out. The golden boys of dance music just got some competition: The Rogue Element.

Lumina is released on 29 June on Exceptional.  Available to pre-order from Amazon.co.uk [affiliate link].

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