Single Review: Mystery Jets - Flakes

Having teamed up with the ever talented Erol Alkan for production duties the next Mystery Jets album is an enticing prospect. In anticipation of that next full release The Mystery Jets are offering up the Alkan produced that 'Flakes' to anyone who signs up to emails over at their site.

BlackPlastic won't ruin too much of the surprise, since it is free you really should check it out, but it is suffice to say that they have knocked out the sexiest guitar ballad BlackPlastic has heard in years and it literally sounds like snow flakes - no bad thing at this time of year - and is probably the best new song heard round these parts for a good couple of months.

If the Alkan / Mystery Jets collaboration is always going to yield music this good BlackPlastic is excited.

BP x

Good stuff from 2007 - part two

Take the best song off one of this years' best albums. Add warm
basslines and sunny twinkles. Leave the vocal in tact. Throw in mild
distortion. Decimate with the filthiest, sunniest acid line
imaginable. Done.

Van She Tech's remix of Feist's '1 2 3 4' is a thing of pure,
unadulterated joy. It's warm, infectious, naughty, cute, hopeful,
sunny, gorgeous and virtually perfect. More than anything it is LOUD.

Skip back to the beginning before you let it finish otherwise the
goosebumps will fade. If you needed a pick me up this year, this was it.

News: Hot Chip are ready to hit the floor

Despite some recent commentary in the blogosphere to the contary the new Hot Chip single 'Ready For The Floor' is more loveable pop goodness.

The vocal snatches make no real sense but the overall impact of the record is this:

It sounds like your Casio keyboard is diddling your girlfriend's skittle whilst your too busy dreaming about clouds shaped like women. This record sounds like the smiles of coy but sexy girls in skirts which is interesting because it may or may not have been written for,
and rejected by, Kylie.

What's important is that this is on lockdown on the stereo. Oh, and he Soulwax remix with its rolling drum breakdown is the bomb too.

BP x

Good things in 2007 part 1

Never one for lists, BlackPlastic is taking December as the
opportunity to touch on some good things that happened in 2007. Some
may have been mentioned on these pages before, most will not have.

Part One - Groove Armada release an album that doesn't suck and is, in
fact, surprisingly enjoyable.

After the disaster that was the critically lampooned Lovebox, 2007
should have seen Groove Armada packing up their toys and heading back
to the land of 'Ultimate Chill With a Pint and a Bag of Chips 08' or
something. Instead they teamed up with an unemployed ex-Sugababe
(someone get them a union) in creating one of the best pop singles for
this year in the form of 'Song 4 Mutya'. Blackplastic cares not who
you think you are, if the "bam BAM!" noise don't get ya something is
amiss.

What's more, there was more good stuff on the long-player... Check out
the distorted pop-soul of 'The Things That We Could Share', Candi
Staton's guest spot on the wide-screen emo-disco-breaks of 'Paris' or
the tick-tick-boom of 'The Girls Say' where they out-Outkast Outkast
whilst throwing in some acid for good measure. The chill-out crowd are
even catered for in the form of 'From The Rooftops'...

If GA can sound this enjoyable when they do pop BlackPlastic will take
a fraction of the fun available here over a hundred albums worth of re-
imaginings of 'At The River'.

BP x

Album Review: DJ Kicks - Booka Shade

Just like buses good DJ-Kicks albums are known to come in threes. Possibly. And as such it is with little surprise then to which BlackPlastic responded to the news that the latest installment, hot on the heels of Got Chip's still-on-heavy-rotation effort, is from Germany's kings of minimal, Booka Shade.

Unsurprisingly the mix on offer here is an entirely different kettle of fish. For every left turn on Hot Chip's album Booka Shade instead illustrate a smooth, considered blend.

Which is not to say there are no suprises... There are. Take Heaven 17's 'Geisha Boys and Temple Girls'. Or Yazoo's 'Situation' for that matter, coming as it does out of the paranoid fog of Booka Shade's own 'Estoril' sounding like a combination of Yello's 'Oh Yeah' and 'No Way Back' by The Adonis. It's just that these tracks are still blended in to the whole and maintain the constant, contemplative mood.

It is this contemplative mood that at one point threatens to ruin, and then saves the same mix. In the middle third a slight over-abundance of icey electro and moody minimal-techno tracks almost make things too melanchollic... The John Carpenter track, 'Arrival at the Library', overlaid with the vocals to Mlle Caro & Franck Garcia's 'Far Away' is a case in point.

Yet whenever things are in danger of getting too formulaic, or blue, or spikey the mix subtle moves off in another direction. Take Brigitte Bardot's 'Contact'. Just as it becomes too much it (somewhat begrudgingly) gives in to Booka Shade's 'Numbers'. And what a track to give in to...

Every DJ Kicks album features an original composition from the DJ and, as their first vocal track, 'Numbers' (much like Hot Chip's shimmering 'My Piano' before it) is a bit special. A moody yet slinky request for your phone digits, 'Numbers' is a love song that is not about the person being propositioned, but surely some other individual... The one that makes the vocalist want to forget. And it's contemplative again, but this time in a refreshing way. Add some strings and you've got something you'd be only too happy to pick-up on the rebound.

Of equal brilliance is Hot Chip's newly released remix of Matthew Dear's already brilliant 'Don & Sherri' (sorry, there is a theme here... It's that Hot Chip are awesome). The original maybe a wonky IDM freak-out, equal parts love-song, stalker anthem and onslaught of creepy paranoia wrapped up into a pop song package. Hot Chip pick it up and run with it and you soon have a bitter-sweet anthem and the lyrics take on numerous hidden depths as Alexis opines the lines 'How could I let you forget me when you don't even know me already?' Hot Chip's take on this song is so good, all naked vocals and twinkling melodic synth stabs, that it is an absolute no-brainer why Booka Shade passed up on label-mates M.A.N.D.Y.'s mix in favour of it here.

'Don & Sherri' and the Matthew Dear LP Asa Breed deserve their own posts they are that good. But rest-assured that as Richard Hawley's 'Last Orders' gets called you will have found much to like here. Booka Shade put in a fine effort here, convincing of their historical knowledge and programming (DJ speak for sequencing) skills. Here's hoping for bus number three.