Album Review: Infinite Love - Dustin Wong

Sometimes you eat the bear, and sometimes, well, he eats you. Or so says the stranger to the Dude in the Coen Brother's rather majestic The Big Lebowski.

In other words, life is bittersweet and full of surprises. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Dustin Wong's Infinite Love feels like an album built for the days you win and the days you lose.

A concept album that calls to mind the Magnetic Fields' 69 Love Songs in reverse, Infinite Love is actually two albums. Or perhaps the same album twice. Both start the same but they diverge halfway through, giving the listener a choice of experiences. Each version of the album consists of 15 un-named 'tracks' but each of these blends into the next and are purely for navigation. Ultimately this is one piece of music, just in two versions, the 'Brother' version and the 'Sister' version.

With a continuous, instrumental approach it almost feels ambient. But it is actually pretty much all warmly strummed rhythm guitar music. Imagine if Here-Come-The-Warm-Jets-Eno bumped into Music-For-Airports-Eno and you would be halfway there. It should be impenetrable, pretentious and dull but it is anything but.

Infinite Love is a heart-warming victory lap. Dustin Wong was inspired by orchestral music on this album and it shows in the ambition and use of space - this is as exciting and experimental an album as you could expect.

BP x

Infinite Love is out now on Thrill Jockey, available from Amazon.co.uk on CD+DVD and LP+DVD [affiliate links].

EP Review: Klavierwerke EP - James Blake

Sure, accuse us of hyperbole, but James Blake's latest EP is what genius would sound like if you distilled it down to twenty-minutes of music and then just let it be.

Nowhere is this demonstrated more confidently than on the already hyped-to-shit 'I Only Know (What I Know Now)'. What makes this record so good? It's Blake's confidence in his own conviction. He basically takes one really good idea, marinades it, lets the thing infuse for a moment and then kills it. Moby made two whole fucking albums based on old soul samples that all sound the same. Here James Blake has taken one gorgeous snippet of a vocal and simply made the best record you could out of it. And that is the genius - there is no kitchen sink here, just one idea the composer really believed in.

BlackPlastic has long held dubstep to be speed garage for people with beards and, well, it is. But then this isn't really dubstep - it's just the best things to ever come out of the dubstep scene.

BP x

The Klavierwerke EP is out now on R&S Records, available from Amazon.co.uk on MP3.

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.

EP Review: A Swedish Love Story - Owen Pallett

Owen Pallett's debut album under his real name, released earlier this year and entitled Heartland, was something of a revelation - the kind of dizzying, joyful album that keeps you coming back. You are most likely, however, to know Pallett's work through association - he contributed to Arcade Fire's first two albums (Funeral and Neon Bible) and prior to recording as himself he went under the moniker Final Fantasy.

In BlackPlastic's opinion Pallett is at his best where his love of the violin and the keyboard come together to make the kind of uplifting, introspective songs Sufjan Stevens would be proud of. And on that basis A Swedish Love Song, an EP of four new tracks, is an unapologetic success.

Opening with the energetic, uplifting and slightly thrilled 'A Man With No Ankles', Pallett instantly sounds like as though he has woken from a decade long slumber. "Somewhere between the window and my doorstep, I remembered what it was to play, to play, to play" he cries, as if suddenly struck by the insanity of modern living and the joy of being genuinely excited.

'Scandal At The Parkade' up the string-based flourishes and sounds even more influenced by classical music than Pallett already usually does. 'Honour The Dead Or Else' is more downbeat, building to a dark and ominous crescendo two-thirds in before arriving at a modest finale. Final track 'Don't Stop' is the strongest here, a beautiful epic - a stuttering rhythm beating at the heart of the song giving the whole thing an unstoppable vibe.

The biggest complaint BlackPlastic could level at Owen Pallett is that it often all feels a little too similar - Heartland was an album best consumed in pieces rather than as a whole. As such this four-track EP represents an ideal package to serve as an introduction.

BP x

A Swedish Love Story is released tomorrow on Domino, available to pre-order from Amazon.co.uk on MP3.

EP Review: Undressed - Future Islands

Future Islands' debut album continues to be one of BlackPlastic's favourite releases of 2010. On the eve of their UK tour they release their Undressed EP - a selection of acoustic versions of songs (two of which come from the album In Evening Air) recorded for their hometown radio station WYPR.

Acoustic versions can be hit or miss - surprisingly Future Islands' material establishes a whole new level of maligned frustration stripped of the places to hide that its conventional production provides. The new versions of existing songs - 'An Apology' and 'Long Flight' - shine with a new found naked ugliness.

This is music doused in regret. 'Long Flight', already one of In Evening Air's highlights, shuffles back and forth whilst singer Sam Herring becomes increasingly meek and desperate, with the piano and string accompaniment encircling him like a pack of vultures.

The two non-album tracks are even better. Opener 'In The Fall' is heavy and downtrodden, with Herring's vocals more forceful and at home than they sound on the existing material. Closing track 'Little Dreamer' fittingly takes an opposite tack - the drums are as heavy as 'In The Fall' but the song itself feels as though it has been made of glass, a delicate and fragile piece that barely survives the attention it receives from the listener over the course of its three-minute duration.

On the back of the impressive In Evening Air, Undressed is proof enough that Future Islands boast bags of promise.

BP x

Undressed is released on Thrill Jockey on 20 September.

UK TOUR DATES:

Wed 29 Sep London, UK CAMP Basement

Thu 30 Sep Brighton, UK Freebutt

Fri 1 Oct Manchester, UK Islington Mill

Sat 2 Oct Glasgow, UK Cry Parrot

Sun 3 Oct Leeds, UK The Library

Wed 20 Oct Dublin, Ireland Workman's Club