Charlotte Gainsbourg's 5:55 was something of a masterpiece and if 'IRM' is anything to go by the follow-up album, from which it is taken, could be even better.
Check the video for a teaser and a quick interview with Charlotte but if you head over to Charlotte's site you can download an MP3 of the song for free. Inspired by the rhythmic sensation of undergoing an MRI scan it's a trippy, spooky number that feels a long way from the melodic autumnal walks of 5:55 but still captivates.
BlackPlastic is excited to hear what impact this new found eclecticism will have on the forthcoming album.
By accident this week BlackPlastic suddenly thought about all the old Masters At Work material we used to love so much. Luther Vandross came up in conversation - something that is always 100% guaranteed to get BlackPlastic thinking about his utterly sublime eight-minute epic 'Are you Using Me?', produced by Masters At Work.
Having routed around the old collection we came across some old CDs that had never even found their way onto the computer hard-drive, let alone the iPod: Masters At Work's ten year anniversary compilations. The problem with Masters At Work is they are another one of those acts that never understood what made them great... As the production values ramped up over the years all the charm vanished - the roughness that made their music feel real. By the time Our Time Is Coming [affiliate link] came out much of the magic had disappeared.
So here are a couple of cuts to show off just how good Kenny Dope & Louise Vega could be. First up, the first ever release under their highly celebrated Nuyorican Soul guise - 'The Nervous Track'. It's a thrilling track, with its warm synths in the background, catchy bassline and rolling drums. It really captures the excitement of early electronic dance music despite the fact it only dates back to 1993... And those stabs of brass are pure class.
Another Nuyorican Soul jam to demonstrate how different Masters At Work's material could be. This time their collaboration with George Benson. You need to give this a good few minutes before it even gets going, but trust if you've never heard this track, trust us when we say that you need to - it's without doubt one of the best pieces of house music ever made. Ever.
The Masters At Work Tenth Anniversary compilations are out of print now but fairly easily sought out - something it is well worth doing due to the size of them (four discs each, and there are two) and the fact that they have a lot of the full length mixes that are hard to find elsewhere, they are also pretty cheap. Sellers have both Part One and Part Two on Amazon and the Nuyorican Soul album is a must have too [affiliate links].
They may have gone of the boil since the turn of the century but if you like music, you need to hear this stuff.
If you were to come up to BlackPlastic and ask us what song you should play in your office / shop / hair dressers' / generic place of work that is going to cause maximum offence then The Subs' 'Mitsubitchi' would probably be it.
Like a five-year-old child with ADHD and suffering from a nose-bleed 'Mitsubitchi' doesn't give a damn who you are or what you are doing, it just wants your attention and isn't going to shut-up or stop pulling a variety of stupid shapes until it gets it. Subtle this ain't, but it is fun in a 'wearing pants on your head' type way.
Put it this way - it's for the weekend, not for life.
The Subs are playing at FabricLive this Friday for Fabric's 10th Birthday weekend. Simian Mobile Disco (good), the Filthy Dukes (good) and Shinichi Osawa (great) will also be playing. Visit FabricLondon.com for more.
GusGus' move to Kompakt for their latest album release speaks volumes. This is an album that only continues the move away from the accessible pop-tech-house of Attention that we glimpsed on last album Forever.
And such a move represents a decision that BlackPlastic can't help but lament. In a typically Icelandic fashion 24/7 is a slightly unhinged minimal tech-house album.
BlackPlastic will precede what we are about to say with the assertion that 24/7 does contain moments of greatness - the soulful vocals of 'Hateful' and the contrast between it's angular, unemotional production and its lyrical content.
But everything is so damned spaced out, in both senses of the phrases. The vocals and minimal sound create a weird sense of isolation - the whole album feels delirious - and at the same time it feels like everything is built with such a focus on slow progression that the result is an album incapable of surprising the listener. Case in point - 'On The Job' with it's repeated shouts of "On the job, 24/7 never stop!" over it's 11-minute length... It's an acidic tripped out epic but it ultimately feels meaningless.
The synthesizers are, as always with GusGus, key here. Therefore you can understand why they have tried to strip everything else out - the likes of the evil sounding, acidic 'Take Me Baby' are far better than your average minimal output. The album is a paranoid, lonely one that conjures the feeling of the band's cold homeland in a way so far from the likes of Sigur Rós that it bears no comparison.
The problem is that GusGus also know how to write a good tune, yet on 24/7 it feels like all the actual tunes have been sacrificed - put out to pasture in favour of a concept that simply doesn't have the mileage to compare favorably to their earlier work.
BP x
24/7 is out now, available from Amazon.co.uk on CD and LP [affiliate links].
Metronomy have no right to be this bloody good. Last album Nights Out recreated the Metronomy sound in the form of a band with proper vocals and everything - you only need to take one listen to the last Simian Mobile Disco album to get a feel for how well (or not) that can go. But Nights Out surprised because, actually, it wasn't shit. In fact it was rather good.
And now this: basically three tracks (plus a stack of remixes) of sheer, wonky-pop-gold. 'Not Made For Love' sounds like Metronomy's best Hot Chip impression and golly does it sucker-punch BlackPlastic with it's slow, soulful hook and dough-eyed vocals. 'Do The Right Thing' recalls Nights Out's 'Thing For You' with it's falsetto vocals, only this time the whole song feels like it has been ground down to dust by dark winter nights and walks home following miss-understood romantic exchanges. Finally 'What Do I Do Now' is a completely bizarre electronic trip. With distorted vocals and a driving synth it feels like the actual soul of a spurned computer game, pining for a lost love but unable to understand it's feelings.
The whole EP feels like music that is being more honest than it intends. It may set out to make you dance but it ends up crying on your shoulder instead. Metronomy have just created the perfect soundtrack for those contemplative autumnal evenings now the nights are drawing in.
The remixes may be ultimately surplus to requirements but the package certainly is not. A perfect way to keep warm as autumn draws in.
BP x
Not Made For Love is out now, available from Amazon.co.uk on LP and MP3 [affiliate links].
