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].

Album Review: Mirror Traffic - Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks

One of the few bands I discovered in my teenage years that I continue to develop a fondness for rather than a slowly building distance from are Pavement. Something about SM and the crew's absolute embrace of being a slacker shines to me as a more admirable ambition than that of a thousand try-hard rock stars, let alone all those bankers & politicians. Pick a cut at random from either of Pavement's first three albums and you will be greeted with something that sounds like the band could barely be bothered to exist, so how they managed to enter a studio and record music is beyond me. And it's spellbinding: horizontal to the point where any further would be perpendicular.

And here I will level with you - as big a fan of Pavement's as I am the solo material I have heard, from Malkmus or anyone else, has always left me a little cold. It lacked th (lack of) focus that made Pavement special. But, producer slut that I am, the announcement of Beck as the producer of Mirror Traffic had me a little excited.

And it turns out I had every right to be. Mirror Traffic arguably sounds like a better Pavement album than the last Pavement album. The slacker charm is here in full force and whilst it might not be Crooked Rain, there are a whole bunch of bloody excellent tunes. I remember reading of a spat between the Smashing Pumpkins' Billy Corgan and Malkmus (following a harmless dig from the latter on ’Range Life') in which Corgan counter-dissed Pavement (and still does), saying "people don't fall in love to Pavement... they put on Smashing Pumpkins or Hole or Nirvana, because these bands actually mean something to them".

The stupid thing about this exchange is that nothing could be further from the truth, and the same goes here, many years on. Much more so than on Malkmus' other solo work. Just listen to the gloriously catchy, scruffy guitars of 'Stick Fingers In Love' for example. Or the loose near-balladry of 'Share The Red', with Malkmus' vocal delivery of the line "I'll be watching all the time" in the bridge spat out in distaste. This music still packs the kind of passionate punch that most bands would die for.

The lyrics themselves are, at times, similarly full of downer brilliance. Take the opening of 'Forever 28’: "I can see the mystery of you and me will never quite add up / no-one is your perfect fit, I do not believe in that shit, don't you know every bubble bursts?"

As for production, Beck's touch is deft. Play this to a Pavement fan without them knowing the producer and they would know no different - it's raw and grungey and loose yet as soon as you know the producer it comes as little surprise... The hints are there in the snippets of brass, choruses of wordless 'ahhhhhs' as backing vocals. Beck has brought his skill to Malkmus' songwriting, but at the expense of nothing.

All in all this Mirror Traffic is a thrill: a post-pavement record better than you could hope for.

BP x

Mirror Traffic is out now, available from Amazon.co.uk on CD, LP and MP3 [affiliate links].

Album Review: The Blackout - Tunnels

Inspired by the likes of A Crash Course In Science and Throbbing Gristle, Tunnels (real name Nick Bindeman, from Eternal Tapestry and Jackie-O Motherfucker) is focused on creating vintage sounding electronic post-punk. And his influences are writ large on this debut album.

The sounds of the past may be all of this record but to modern ears this sounds like a much more distorted angular Metronomy and really reminds me of early 2000s wünderkid Zongamin (whatever happened to?). Regardless, Bindeman's real influences are clear and any similarity is more a result of shared references rather than one following the other.

In reality The Blackout is darker than either of the aforementioned artists, harking back to the stark darkness of early eighties industrial post-punk. The ten songs here feel a world away from the jaunty melodies of Metronomy's electro-pop. Bindeman's vocals are monotone, obscured by a melancholic bass guitar and scratchy guitars - the lyrics are usually barely audible but even so one suspects they don't tell a happy tale.

As a piece of music this is an interesting listen rather than an enjoyable one - the production is challenging and whilst the album is brief in duration at 30 minutes it's difficult not to feel a little trapped and isolated by the closing in walls of static. It's a little like trying to walk through pitch black: there are no waypoints or guiding lights here and it is easy to feel lost.

The Blackout may be a great tribute to some of the best innovators that emerged in the early eighties post-punk scene, a trip back early industrial and experimental electronic sounds. As good as it is, it's a hard thing to love.

BP x

The Blackout is out on Monday 29 August on Thrill Jockey, available for pre-order from Amazon.co.uk on LP [affiliate link].

Single Review: Do We Need? - Slove

French angular post-punkers just might be the new ones to watch if you like your music pitched somewhere between punk and dance. With a heavy bass pounded out from a bass guitar that recalls Etienne de Crécy's epic 'Fast Track', 'Do We Need?' feels slow, spent, minimal and atmospheric. Eschewing conventional song structure it's difficult to categorise - this feels perfectly equidistant between guitar based music and house structures and the result is a brilliant mix. My only criticism would be its length - 'Do We Need?', admittedly here in radio edit form, is just too damn short.

Tackling that are the two remixes included in this package - one by Kitsuné's Yan Wagner and the other by Remain (AKA Romain Rouffiac). Both remixes inevitably head in a more dance floor orientated direction. Whilst Wagner's mix is warm and sunny, with bouncy bass and melodic keys splashing across its length, Remain amps up the frictional, acerbic sound of the original and transforms it into a darker acidic techno piece.

All three takes have their merits but it will be Slove's original material, due to emerge on full length album Le Danse later this year, that makes or breaks this band.

Check out the video for 'Do We Need?' below:

BP x

Do We Need? is released on Pschent on Monday 15 August.

Album Review: Coastal Grooves - Blood Orange

Dev Hynes continues to blow my mind. As part of Test Icicles he helped play a (severely underrated) role in the birth of nu rave and proved that kids that dance can still rock hard. As Lightspeed Champion he made folk cool years before Laura Marling and Noah and the Whale (and let's not forget more interesting, as Falling Off The Lavender Bridge is still way more interesting that the Fleet Foxes). And here he is again, taking the long road home.

Hynes seems destined to make things difficult for himself - each time slotting into a slightly more oblique genre and changing his name like selling records is the last thing he wants. It's both a shame and a miracle, for he is exactly what us musos pine for: a well kept secret.

Blood Orange is, unsurprisingly, a rather different project to either of Hynes' previous incarnations. And, frustratingly for me as reviewer, it's rather difficult to describe. There are elements of post-punk, a retained country influence, an electronic edge and what feels like an oriental influence. It is also Dev Hynes' most obscure project to date. But it also might be his most interesting.

Whilst it feels instantly unrecognisable from Lightspeed Champion's honest Americana there are some similarities - 'S'Cooled', for example, may have a shuffling electronic beat a mile away from anything Hynes has used before but it still boasts the delicate guitar picking of ...Lavender Bridge.

Coastal Grooves feels more consciously produced than anything Hynes has released before but ironically it also feels more honest and exposed. The melodies feel like they bounced out of his head and the lyrics drooled out of his sleeping mouth agape even more so than before. That makes it sounds throwaway but that isn't the intention - this just feels like artist having an idea and acting on it without worrying about the listener at all. Which is refreshing.

And there are still memorable tunes - 'The Complete Knock', with it's disco influenced bridge complete with snappy guitars and a electro-inspired bridge, for example. Or 'I'm Sorry We Lied', a rapid fire blues record - insistent drums and picked out melodies like a foreign delicacy.

More than anything Coastal Grooves proves Hynes continues to care about his art and that he doesn't care if you care. But trust me, you should.

BP x

Coastal Grooves is released on Domino on Monday, available to pre-order from Amazon.co.uk on CD, LP and MP3 [affilaite links].