Album Review: Immolate Yourself - Telefon Tel Aviv

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Taking elements of post-rock, the sounds of early M83 and late Ulrich Schnauss - plus maybe even a pinch of mid-career BT - Telefon Tel Aviv snuck out their new album 'Immolate Yourself' a few weeks back.

BlackPlastic may have only just got around to commenting but Telefon Tel Aviv just might have gone and made the best straight up electronic album in a while. The strength here is really in the polish and attention to detail - the ambient melodies could easily have missed their mark if it wasn't for the layers of distortion and punchy drums that refuse to become enveloped in sound - each beat and stutter, each fragment of sound adds texture and detail.

With the rhythmic touches of breaks, the melodies of ambient house and the production quality of the best minimal techno 'Immolate Yourself' feels like a photographic image that literally stands up off the page.

The result is pretty glorious. The opening Birds lures the listener into an album that never gives up and whilst they know better than to stray too far from the template there is enough variety - in the 80s sheen and bubbling bass of Helen of Troy for example - to keep things interesting. Yet most of all it is the feelings Telefon Tel Aviv convey in their music that stays with the listener after 'Immolate Yourself' has drawn to a close.

Intelligent, emotive and modest.

Available on Amazon.co.uk here.

BP x

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

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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.

BP x

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

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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.

BP x

Available at Amazon on CDand in MP3.

News: Phoenix are back!

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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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