Album Review: Begone Dull Care - Junior Boys

Junior Boys: the auditory equivalent of perfection through design. A Junior Boys record feels like slipping on a perfect new jacket, firing up a sports car in the show room, turning on that pristine new MacBook Pro.

They have always had that feeling and, in all likelihood, probably always will. Above all Junior Boys produce shimmering 80s influenced pop music and Begone Dull Care does not meddle with this formula. If you didn't like either of the first two albums then you are unlikely to like this.  If you have accused their sound of being over-produced then you still will.

Having said which, if you don't like either of the first two albums then BlackPlastic has concerns for your ability to judge anyway.

Begone Dull Care is more of the same in the best possible way - it takes what was great and refines it. It is a more positive, slightly more upbeat affair, and more than ever this feels like a duo in mastery of their sound. By focusing on just eight tracks here it truly sounds like an album where every single beat, bleep and vocal has been obsessed over.

The whole thing is very beautiful, with the kind of rarified sound BlackPlastic would expect from a Blue Nile release or something similar, where years have been poured into each song. The shimmering pop feels fare to cared for to be 'just' another album.

If BlackPlastic were mean it would suggest that, maybe, a little live instrumentation could have made this great album classic. Just listen to what a touch of trumpet did on closing track 'Lullaby' from Morgan Geist's Double Night Time last year.

BlackPlastic isn't feeling mean however so we simply say: some music dulls with repeated listens. Like a child force fed cotton candy: the novelty wears off. Other albums reward the listener for making repeated visits, growing, maturing with age. Begone Dull Care falls into the latter case. Get it now because when you play this in ten years it will sound so much better for the memories it will then hold.

Available at Amazon.co.uk on CD and LP .

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Album Review: Smoke the Monster Out - Damian Lazarus

Having started the label Crosstown Rebels and produced some of the best mix albums in recent memory the concept of an artist album from Damian Lazarus was an interesting one. Usually you would have an idea of what to expect from a DJ or an artist album by checking their own productions but in Lazarus' case, in BlackPlastic's knowledge at least, there were no tracks produced by him released prior to this album.

Anyone who has heard lead single 'Moment' will know exactly what to expect. And that's the unexpected... Because Smoke the Monster Out is a musical journey about as far from the dancefloor as anything Get Physical have released previously. Out not long after Bronnt Industries Kapital recent Hard For Justice it shows the label to be much more creative and less risk averse than BlackPlastic would have previously thought.

'Moment' is not a dance track so much as a brain seizure. With a piano intro and a melodic vocal, presumably Lazarus himself, it starts off like the delicate ramblings of a Spiritualized or Lou Reed track before descending into a dubby cacophony of snatched vocals and bass. The album's main guest vocalists, the Sweidsh twins from Taxi Taxi, repeat Lazarus' opening line over time-stretched versions of themselves. It sounds Lazarus not giving a damn about where he came from and, frankly, it's a breath of fresh air. It's inventive in a totally unexpected way. Acting as a counter-weight to 'Moment' is Lazarus' cover of Scott Walker's 'It's Raining Today', an epic ballad positioned one track away from the album's close as if to mirror the position of 'Moment', one track separated from the album's opening.

Some tracks are (a little) more straight up - 'Memory Box' is less good, but it's cockney-yob minimal is more what you would expect of this album. At the same time there are curiosities in different forms, with 'Diamond In The Dark' being one - a duet of computer synthesized vocals combined with Lazarus' own over a gentle backing. 'Neverending' is different again, a celebratory stomp of a dance pop record.

Smoke the Monster Out may occasionally backfire in its attempts to be different but on the whole it is a total success. Not since Joakim's equally bonkers Monsters & Silly Songs has an album captured so many ideas in one place whilst simultaneously confounding all ideas of what a dance album should consist of.

Smoke the Monster Out's greatest achievement is that it sounds cohesive despite taking a inconsistent approach. The moods and ideas are fractured but there is an overriding dub-drenched paranoia that weaves its way through the whole thing.

Available on at Amazon.co.uk on CD , LP and MP3 .

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MP3: Moon - James Kane

Melbourne's James Kane, whose mixes and remixes have got BlackPlastic hot under the collar before, has just finished work on a new track called 'Moon'.

'Moon' is a bit of a departure from James' previous work.  It's a somewhat introspective, lonely piano piece against a backdrop of radio echoes and deep space rumblings.  BlackPlastic always loves a bit of space and this captures some of the loneliness that must have struck the participants on the Apollo missions back in the sixties.  It also sounds like it would slot nicely into the soundtrack to the forthcoming movie Moon (if you haven't seen it, watch the awesome trailer).

It's only a short piece and BlackPlastic would actually love to hear an extended version, perhaps featuring some battered male vocals (maybe with a Lou Reed type vibe).

Check it out (right click, save as) and head over to James Kane's MySpace for more.

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Album Review: Junior - Röyksopp

Röyksopp seem destined to be a band that exists in the shadows of their own songs - a bizarrely twisted victim of their own success. The problem is that they write such a catchy tune that most people never get beyond 'the one of the adverts that Soulwax mixed with Dolly Parton' (that'll be 'Eple' then). Worse faults have been suffered by bands but still, it seems that they will forever be a victim of that first breakthrough track.

Junior may not address that concern completely but it does have a jolly good try. The sound is a little edgier, a bit more dance orientated in places, but the song writing is still there. Just check out the incessantly chirpy 'Happy Up Here' or 'The Girl and The Robot', a throbbing electronic pop track featuring Robyn on vocals - it's certainly good enough to secure Röyksopp prodctions duties on her next album.

The problem is that Junior still sounds too like Röyksopp. 'Happy Up Here' is catchy but in reality it just sounds like a funky take on 'Eple' with some vocals. As mentioned, the production, the SOUND and feel of these tracks has developed and evolved slightly. 'This Must Be It' takes 'What Else Is There', complete with guest vocalist Karin Dreijer Andersson of the Knife, and applies a new coat of paint. The problem is they've let the pop song beneath rot away leaving a track that is very similar in every way bar quality to a track on their last album.

Junior is nice background music but BlackPlastic challenges you, dear reader, to find one person prepared to name Röyksopp as their all time favourite band. They need to start showing us more - half an idea an album is only enough if you have so much passion that the audience is bessotted with who you are already. Next time - more, please.

Available now on Amazon.co.uk on CD , LP and MP3

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Album Review: Primary Colours - The Horrors

Having historically attracted a level of hype that can only be lead to disappointment the Horrors, as of album number one, were the kind of band BlackPlastic loves to hate. With gimmicks over style and absolutely anything over any substance it was easier to ignore their existence than analyse or comment on it.

The hype machine is in full motion once more but this time something is different. The Horrors' follow up album Primary Colours, produced by Geoff Barrow (of Portishead), Chris Cunningham and Craig Silvey, is not just not crap, it's actually pretty bloody spectacular. To the point that it's now become accepted hype to discuss how surprisingly not-shit it actually is.

Veering from the quite good to the brilliant the references are clear - there are the usual post-punk touchpoints, Joy Division, The Replacements, Neu!. What really separates Primary Colours from being another tired post-punk re-tread is that it sounds, and feels, totally uncompromisingly real. As the warm electronic waves give way to a lead bass guitar and bags of reverb drenched drums on opener 'Mirror's Image' this doesn't sound like a modern day take on post punk, or classic post-punk - it sounds like the band flicked through their record collection, stopped after Joy Division's Closer and just wondered... "What if...?"

Primary Colours is like an alternative version of history - what if the most exciting period of musical history had not simply turned into into New Romanticism and had instead evolved from the stripped back experimentation of the late 70s / very early 80s? Barrow and company's production work is sublime but there is more to this album than just that - there are real, proper, difficult songs here. From the weird sliding guitar sounds of 'Three Decades', the brutally cold selfishness of 'Who Can Say' and it's awkward spoken word bridge to the distorted krautrock of 'Sea Within A Sea' Primary Colours is better than anyone could have expected. It's harsh and beautiful and maginificent.

The pretenders just became the feel thing.

Available at Amazon.co.uk on CD, LP and MP3.

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