EP Review: Straight To The Moon - Tanner Ross

Image source: Zaber RidersThis new one out on Double Standard is pure gloss and sweat. Tanner's EP recalls smooth electronic R&B from the late eighties and early nineties conjuring an infectious retro set of smooth grooves. It feels like it almost could have been there.

Straight To The Moon opens with the ensemble cast number 'Blame Game', featuring Slow Hands, Pillow Talk and Jesse Rennix - the latter two sparring syrupy vocals that keep the soul flowing. Next up is 'Frequent Flyer' featuring Jules Born - it's a heavier, funkier track that melds 'Billie Jean'-esque wandering bass lines with a more up-to-date production style. The result is thick and infectious, lazy and sun bleached and therefore perfect for days doing nothing in the warm summer sun.

The instrumental title track is more cosmic - basically little more than a locked groove tweaked out over four-minutes that sounds like Com Truise with a Flock Of Seagulls haircut. 'Straight To Mexico' is more laid back - swirling keys and drums stabbed through a honey thick bass. Soul Clap's Lonely C turns up on 'Be Chillin'', a dubby affair with distorted vocals that is the one track here that struggles to justify its position.

Things are rounded out with instrumentals of 'The Blame Game' and 'Frequent Flyer'. Overall Straight To The Moon feels a little like one idea played several times over but it's so perfectly suited to summer pool parties and slow, hot days that it's hard to resist.

Straight To The Moon is released on 18 June through Double Standard.

Album Review: In Our Heads - Hot Chip

Image source: BBC.co.ukI've already commented before that Hot Chip's last album, 2010‘s One Life Stand, left me a little cold... It felt like a band slipping through the cracks, trapped between two sounds, and whilst the result was not bad per se it just came off a little unsatisfying. In retrospect this makes some sense - Hot Chip have now split from major EMI and In Our Heads represents their first album for independent Domino.

More than any other single variable the move from a major feels like a considerable contributing factor to what is undoubtedly a return to form. In Our Heads feels like a band freed up from their own (or the label's?) image of what they should be. These songs are almost all less obviously pop than anything Hot Chip have released before. Whilst there are plenty of hooks and the trademark catchy choruses remain there are less radio friendly trick shots and more grown up songs than ever before.

Opener 'Motion Sickness' sets the pace, it's a soaring eighties ballad wrapped in early house production and it manages to achieve this without even appearing to try too hard. It's a disconcerted tribute to our complex times and music's key role in guiding us through it. And it is also beautiful - Alexis Taylor seemingly overwhelmed by his own capacity to feel, particularly when it comes to music - "Remember when people thought the world was round / everything spins on my head / on my compact disk" he sings.

Emotionally In Our Heads seems most preoccupied with the friction that exists between the heart's desire to take risks and the head's self-preservation instincts. Just listen to 'Don't Deny Your Heart', with its over-eager choruses, for example. The flip side of this feeling is the mind's inability to rid itself of the subject of the heart once it has crawled up inside and lain roots, as felt through the syrupy ballad 'Look At Where We Are' and the raw 'These Chains' - that unwillingness to move on.

This conflict keeps the album moving and culminates in the standout track 'Flutes' (which can be heard here). It's a sombre epic tale of retribution - that moment when you realise that failed relationships or emotional mis-fires take two. It builds over seven-minutes into a climatic emotional house record that calls to mind equal parts Detroit techno and Manchester bands New Order and Electronic.

For all the awkward angst of 'Flutes' the other standout is the even longer 'Let Me Be Him'. It's a wonderfully warm-hearted eighties inspired power ballad reminiscent of The Thompson Twins, the optimistic inevitable emotional rebirth punctuated by a belted out ”oh hey ho” refrain. Just try to resist joining in.

By going with their hearts rather than their heads Hot Chip have made In Our Heads one of their most complete and emotionally significant albums to date.

In Our Heads is released on Domino tomorrow, available for pre-order from Amazon.co.uk on CD, LP and MP3 [affiliate links].

Stream In Our Heads on Spotify below (Spotify account required):

Single Review: Being Supreme - Fish Go Deep

Taken from their forthcoming album this new single from Irish duo Fish Go Deep is pure tension and release. Starting with a slinky, fairly standard minimal intro everything melts away after the first minute, backing away as if to make room for the incoming bass line.

And for a moment the bass line steals the show, thick and dense as it is. But the other elements gradually fall back in - spongy drums and chanted vocals and a deep piano refrain. It builds out layer after layer, the feel taught like elastic at breaking point whilst the vocals continue to chant "We are so.... Deep".

And deep it is, at least until those vocals break into a rally that culminates in a fantastic break, like a pressure release. 'Being Supreme' is a big, bold house record.

On the flip is a a dub - the vocals are used sparingly and the rhythm is thicker but the space lets piano and jazzy stabs of brass move giving things a more summery feeling.

Being Supreme is released on Go Deep on 22 June and is followed by the album Draw The Line on 29 June. Both are available to pre-order here and here respectively on MP3 from Amazon.co.uk [affiliate links].

Stream Being Supreme below on Spotify [account required]:

Album Review: mst - Acid Pauli

In some ways a sufficient review of Acid Pauli's new album would simply read: "Pauli is friends with Nicolas Jaar and hangs about in Germany"

But whilst that does a pretty good job of describing what mst sounds like it doesn't really do Pauli's efforts any justice. This is undoubtedly electronic music cut from the same cloth as Jaar's - throbbing electronic IDM that can't bear to be contained by the confines of the dance floor. The German influence is also felt in the clean lines and focus of mst.

But this is Pauli's own album. For one he resists the urge to vocalise his thoughts. The echoey atmospherics of his work with alternative rock band the Notwist also rear their head. Whilst elements of this record feel like German techno it is simultaneously a messy tangle of clicks and crackles and clattering noise. So it is business on the sides but messy on top.

Much like Jaar's work Pauli's music suggests he is a better listen when playing his own music for himself than when constrained to the requirements of a crowd and a dance floor. And that makes perfect sense when you consider that Pauli's claimed ambition for this album was to create a dance record that reflected the the experience back into everyday life.

These pieces conjure a thrilling listen that act as a canvas for your own emotions, an atmospheric medium. The guttural samba of 'A Clone Is Not A Clone' gently moves through urban hustle and bustle with a gentle seeping paranoia that you'll miss if you aren't looking for it and 'Equation of Time' is could be the internal soundtrack for waiting for the bus or blowing bubbles in the bath. 'Eulogy for Eunice' peels out of the dark corner of the room like the first spit-spots of a rain storm that builds to a thunderstorm and innevitable torrential downpour. It is nine of the most atmospheric minutes ever pressed to record.

mst should put Pauli on the map but it also proves Clown & Sunset and Jaar still have much to offer.

mst is released on Clown & Sunset on 18 June.

Album Reviews: Medicine Man - The Bamboos

The Bamboos latest album, their seventh studio release, takes off where the last one, 4 left off... If you have heard the Melbourne group's other material there aren't any massive surprises here - Medicine Man is another collection of seventies inspired funk songs.

Of course it coming from the Tru Thoughts stable the whole thing smacks of quality. A collection of seventies inspired funk songs this may be, but it's never anything less than fab. The laid back opener 'Where Does The Time Go, featuring Aloe Blacc, is a middle-aged record of disorientation and the first single. It's a fitting intro and it highlights The Bamboos' strength - sophisticated playing and an understated touch that means these songs come forward exactly when they need to and only just as much as is ever required.

There are grittier blues funk numbers like 'What I Know', with just enough spit and sawdust on the vocal to make the whole thing shine when Kylie Auldist's voice really breaks free. Daniel Merriweather features amongst the stuttering drums and deep bass of 'I Never', whilst 'I Got Burned' is packed with bluesy guitar melody, brass, strings and a damaged male falsetto from Tim Rogers.

A cover version of James Blake's 'The Wilhelm Scream' is something of a revelation, coming just three tracks in and proving to be not only a credit to the band but also Blake's songwriting. Free of the latter's clicks and rumbling bass it stands up, the strings and gentle guitar licks a fine substitute as the record builds to its conclusion.

It would be hard not to love the Bamboos. This is well played funk and soul that is just crying out for some rotation on your barbecue playlist this summer.

Medicine Man is released via Tru Thoughts on Monday, available for pre-order from Amazon.co.uk on CD, LP and MP3 [affiliate links].

Stream Medicine Man on Spotify below [account required]: