Album Review: Farewell Good Night's Sleep - Lay Low

Sometimes BlackPlastic goes off-piste. Electronic music may be our bread and butter yet there are occasional albums that fail to fall into this genre yet still deserve some attention.

Lay Low is Icelandic singer Lovisa Elisabet Sigrunardottir and Farewell Good Night's Sleep is her first album to be released in the UK (but her second album proper). Recorded and produced by Liam Watson, who has previously worked with The White Stripes, it smacks of the same laid back laziness of fellow Icelander Emiliana Torrini but with added Jazz. Fact: BlackPlastic loves laziness and BlackPlastic loves jazz.

Not much happens on Farewell Good Night's Sleep: if you want to level criticism at it then that's your best bet. Other than that Lay Low has crafted a joyful, gently strumming album that sounds like it should be the soundtrack to a road trip buddy movie involving lots of drinking and aging. It feels like sipping whisky and holding a cigar whilst dancing in the dark. It's moody yet playful, considered and understated.

Farewell Good Night's Sleep: an excursion you don't want to come home from.

Download the MP3 of Last Time Around (right click, save as).  'Farewell Good Night's Sleep' is released on 9 March.  Available to pre-order at Amazon on CDand in MP3.

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Album Review: Walking On A Dream - Empire of the Sun

As one of last year's biggest acts that BlackPlastic never even mentioned MGMT came to represent the founders of a new sub-genre of nu-rave rock. BlackPlastic has no idea what you would call this genre, but the combination of falsetto vocals, 80s melodies and the kind of filtered disco vibes that would make Daft Punk proud that feature on Empire of the Sun's début ensure it is in this pigeon-hole they will end up.

As a bit of background Empire of the Sun is The Sleepy Jackson's Luke Steele and Pnau's Nick Littlemoore and, somewhat predictably, they're Australian.

And, a bit like their contemporaries MGMT, as an album 'Walking On A Dream' is kind-of mixed. There are no bad tracks, it's just that the album feels uneven. The whole album has a appropriately dream-like feel, particularly the juxtaposition of the soaring melodies (if totally undecipherable lyrics) of Delta Bay's chorus with it's rambling verse, but just as Kids and Electric Feel towered over MGMT's debut, nothing bar the hip-hop influenced Swordfish Hotkiss Night and the 80s ballad Without You, comes close to this album's highlight. And chances are you've already heard it, because title track and first single Walking On A Dream has been all over the radio already.

Justified, without doubt, because it's totally beautifully wonderful. Taking the chord progression from Tracy Chapman's Fast Car and melding it to a ray of sunshine, Corona on the beach and ride on a golf buggy it is just a little glorious tight sexy holiday of a funk-soul record.  The rest of the album may retain this sexy and youthful manner but it simply doesn't scale the same heights.

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Available at Amazon on CDand in MP3.

News: Phoenix are back!

Phoenix have always been one of those bands that have skirted around the boundary of greatness slow closely so often yet never quite transcended it. Well, it looks like that might be set to change as the band have announced a new album is coming in May entitled 'Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix' and the have a site up offering the new song 1901 for download in MP3 or AAC (props for choices!) and it is awesome. Definitely one of their best ever tracks it has a lush synth bass noise that runs throughout it and the vocals totally encapsulate young male yearning.

Check it out here and watch for some of the most beautiful, understated work in flash BlackPlastic has seen in ages.

Phoenix are on Twitter (if somewhat quiet) here and whilst we are on the subject, BlackPlastic is also on twitter at http://www.twitter.com/blackplastic.

Yours, always,

BP x

News: R&S return

Legendary Belgian electronic music label R&S are to make a comeback - if you haven't heard of them then the back catalogue speaks for itself...

'Classics' by Model 500, Aphex Twin's 'Ambient Works 85-92', Ken Ishii's 'Jellytones' and Dave Angel's 'Classics' are all to be re-released on 7 April.  These will be followed on 12 May with 'Classics' releases from Joey Belram (whose Energy Flash was released on R&S) and Aphex Twin together with Model 500's 'Deep Space' and Derrick May's 'Innovator'.

To celebrate R&S are giving away a download of the classic first track from Aphex Twin's 'Ambient Works...', Xtal, in exchange for your email address.  If for some reason you have never checked out 'Ambient Works 85-92' then this release should be something to look forward to.

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Album Review: Polly Scattergood - Polly Scattergood

Coming on with all the effortless unforgiving intimacy of a friend that has seen you change more than you realize, Polly Scattergood does for female singer-song-writing what a shot of Jack Daniels does to Coke.  Sweet it may be, but there's darkness here.

If you want lazy comparisons then Scattergood's début has the strong uncompromising femininity of PJ Harvey, the creativity of Kate Bush and the unhinged beauty of mid-career Radiohead. Far more important is the delivery, which throughout the course of the album varies from the good to the sublime.

Fluctuating from fragile yet doused in misplaced aggression (I Hate The Way) to curious and hopeful (Unforgiving Arms) Scattergood is able to perform vocals with a greater breadth and depth than anyone BlackPlastic has heard in far too long. There is a certain a level of sophistication that ensures the angst on display never veers close to anything as crass and needing as a Alanis Morisette record, yet the songs nevertheless display an unashamed accessibility - just listen to the rubber ball bouncing guitar line and hand-claps of Please Don't Touch.

And here's the thing. What makes this album good is not just Scattergood's ambitious vocal delivery and experimental songwriting - it's the backing provided by a producer not content to take the backseat. When the combination really delivers the result is pretty astounding - album highlight Nitrogen Pink carries Scattergood's vocals on a runaway mine-train of fuzzy melodic distortion like My Bloody Valentine on Top Of The Pops. The glorious crescendo of the building rhythm track feels like you are being dragged along by an out of control horse and cart. If this is a taste of her future work it's a ride BlackPlastic is more than happy to take.

Released on Mute on 9 March 2009. To pre-order on Amazon.co.uk click here .

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