EP Review: Clocks - Simian Mobile Disco

Not so long since their debut long-player proved them to be ones to watch for the future and with member James Ford benefiting from continued success following production work for The Klaxons and Artic Monkeys, SMD treat fans to four new tracks on this new EP.

All are instrumentals and as such demonstrate the duo stripped of some of the bells and whistles that garnered Attack Decay Sustain Release and what it loses in pop sensibilities it gains in velocity and efficiency, with all four cuts geared towards dancefloors and reminiscent of the technical prowess displayed in early Chemical Brothers tracks.

'Clocks' is a relatively tame, melodic effort with bouncy drums whilst 'Simple' persues a somewhat more direct line, with waves of acid and nasty electronic stabs turning it into the equivalent of Attack Decay Sustain Releases' awesome 'Sleep Deprivation' only this time it
follows a bad trip.

'3 Pin Din' squeaks and squelches its way through three minutes before climaxing in a puddle of acid. Final track 'State of Things' is a little sapling, determined to grow and grow into a big Goliath made of live sounding drums but never quite gets there.

It will be interesting to see if this more dancefloor focused effort is a direction that Simian Mobile Disco choose to follow in the future. Whilst there are undoubtably four cuts here to please the
heads BlackPlastic finds itself growing a little tired of the reverb that drenches all four and longs for something with the universal appeal of 'Hustler' or 'It's The Beat'.

BP x

Album Review: Guns Babes Lemonade - Muscles

Call this a belated Valentine's card from BlackPlastic to you: Guns Babes Lemonade is the debut album from Modular's latest (yes, we know there are 'other labels'), Muscles, and it gets BlackPlastic hot under the collar.

Muscles sounds like your best friend getting loved up and recounting all of the best nights outs you've ever had: Guns Babes Lemonade may not be clever, but golly BlackPlastic loves its sweaty little gurning face.

'Sweaty' opens the album like a night out at your shit but favourite local:

"I'm getting tired and I'm sweaty,
But I still want to touch it if you let me.
Because we hugged a few times and it was special...
And we'll be working all night because it's pumping"

The opening line is unlikely to set the world on fire on poetic merit alone but the excitable nature of the vocals perfectly encapsulated the excitement when a random night turns out perfect.

Nothing here is exactly 'new', it simply sounds like every guilty dance-pop pleasure of the last five years in one. It's sickly sweet and one has to be careful not to consume too much at once, but when Muscles declares that "Ice Cream is gonna save the day. Again" on 'Ice Cream' we can't help but want to believe.

Give us remixes, b-sides and more, more, more please!

As the album closer states:
"Hey Muscles, I love you, I wanna have your babies!"

BP x

Album Review: Reality Check - The Teenagers

Record labels still aren't doing their jobs properly as the debut album from The Teenagers seems less to have been released, more just turned up, unannounced, on your back porch. However, take comfort in the fact that The Teenagers themselves are very much excelling in their job - that is creating the music to soundtrack Bret Easton Ellis' own debut effort, Less Than Zero.

Reality Check is what you may expect - ice cold, self-referential lyrics abound amongst layers of fuzz. This sounds like a stream of conscious from a selfish 19 year old. And yet it is still good.

"Homecoming" has been re-tooled and re-edited and sounds fresher as a result. Were it not for the genuinely revealing bridge, new single "Love No" would sound like the most dishearteningly portrait of relationship dysfunction. It's still dysfunctional, but the honesty gives the dysfunction a context and a reason.

"Starlett Johanson" is still the name-dropping victory of style over substance it aims to be. "Feeling Better" manages optimism and features a picked out guitar line that it sounds like they stole from a mid-era New Order record no-one was using.

Reality Check succeeds in achieving it's goals and as a result it not only deserves respect and success, it also deserves to be regarded as one of 2008's coolest records. The question is more: where can we go now? Can this thin sheen of fame-riddled post-punk survive another album or is this more a case of 'Disappear Here'?

BP x

Album Review: Light Sound Dance - The Bang Gang Deejays

BlackPlastic heart Modular and has meant to give some love to Light Sound Dance, mixed by their resident party crew Bang Gang, for pure time. Music may change but good taste remains constant.

We'll be brief: Light Sound Dance (see what they did there? No? Nevermind...) contains almost every track that has filled a dancefloor in the past 18 months.

The beauty is in having them all in one place and as such you can find SebAstian's destruction of The Rapture's 'Get Myself Into It' doing the bad thing all over Punks Jump Up's 'Beep Beep', the Nite Version of Soulwax's 'KracK', Mehdi's ubiquitous 'Signatune' and two remixed Klaxons tracks.

But what this mix is two things:

1. The less obvious choices. Plan B's 'More Than Enough' fits in very nicely, thank you, and it is fantastic to hear Modular label mates The Avalanches again in any form. Hear we get them twice, once with their bells, whistles and kitchen sink remix of Wolfmother's 'Woman' and once on the forever gorgeous and pulse quickening 'Live At The Dominoes'.

2. The somewhat rustic, cut and paste, come and have a go if you think you're hard enough approach. This mix is one of those that genuinely sounds like a ball was had whilst it was made. Light Sound Dance sounds like a good friend playing all your favourite records at once. It's not as defining an Album as As Heard On Radio Soulwax Part 2 but, with 70 songs across two CDs, it just might be the closest anyone has come to that feeling since.

See you on the dancefloor.

BP x

Album Review: Beat Pyramid - These New Puritans

Hotly tipped for 2008 yet having spent a longtime bubbling under the surfaces of the Nu-Rave current, These New Puritans finally get around to releasing their debut album.

Well known for their soundtracking of fashion shows, These New Puritans usher in Beat Pyramid with a dose of trademark pretension in the form of a two part track, 'I Will Say This Twice', which bookends the album. Indeed looking through the tracklisting and artwork quickly reveals a band that may be trying just a little too had to carve out an image.

Still, never judge a book: Beat Pyramid is a good effort. Early tracks 'Numerology' and 'Colours' feature the trademark angular guitars but the switches and cuts into a more melodic bridge in each track lifts these efforts into something more worthwhile.

More exciting are the floaty 'En Papier' and the just re-released but almost-as-old-as-old-rave 'Elvis'. The former manages to add to IDM clicks and distortion and a dash of post-rock melancholy to the proceedings whilst the latter is simply a clattering cacophony or a record, the juxtaposition of the incessant spoken vocal component to the more reflective breakdown creates a real highlight. It is always the more reflective moments that get closest to greatness - see 'Mkk3' for example.

What this demonstrates is either a band that are trying too hard, unable to concentrate on creating a consistently great record due to all the time spent worrying over details, or simply an average band that got lucky in a couple of places. BlackPlastic hopes this is a case of the former but there is still much to play for.

BP x