Album Review: Future Disco Volume 4: Neon Nights - Various

The Future Disco albums always look as if they are a little too cynical to be any good. The concept just feels too well worn, too obvious.

Yet every time BlackPlastic hears a new one there is always enough to impress, and the same definitely goes for Future Disco Volume Four, subtitled Neon Nights. In fact, we'd go so far as to say that volume four is probably the best yet.

Things start well, with Greg Wilson's mix of a cover of Dillinger's 'Cocaine' by Escort - a wobbly heavy-based take on a classic. But it is Stefano e Bene's 'Why Your Love' that really kicks things off, starting off a series of absolute gems... The transition into the Classixx Acapulco mix of Holy Ghost's 'I Will Come Back' is beautiful. And what's more this is easily Holy Ghost's best track since 'Hold On' - exactly the kind of classic house with attitude we had been yearning for.

Ray Mang's mix of 'Ocean' by 2020 Soundsystem is equally epic - subtle and cool but with lush muted vocals running through the song - and then the listener is treated to Bad Rabbits' 'She's Bad', which we have already declared our affection for. Next up is 'Zombie Tropicana' by Hannulerauri, a track which sounds like something New Order would have made if they never came back from Ibiza after making Technique and had instead just kept on the E and given up wearing clothes. In other words, expect lush basslines, warm synths and a pervading sense of loved up apathy.

Elsewhere Tape To Tape's 'Pure & Easy' shines for it's sprinkling of starlight and peaking basslines and the double dose of Kaine feat. Kathy Diamond's 'Love Saves The Day' really pays off when it hits the original mix but in all honesty it is the middle third that really makes this album special.

In the age of MP3 blogs and Soundcloud mixes proper mix albums are feeling increasingly rare - each good one feels like it my be the last. You could worse than make Future Disco Four the last one you buy.

BP x

Future Disco Volume 4: Neon Nights out on Need Want on 7 February, available to pre-order from Amazon.co.uk on CD or MP3 [affiliate links].

Album Review: Life Index - Maceo Plex

Maceo Plex's Life Index at times threatens greatness.

The start is a stark invitation - 'I'm A Metaphor' feels like a statement of intent. It's twisted spoken vocal taking the listener on a journey before any rhythms have even really begun. As the clunking industrialism of 'Gravy Train' rides in Life Index begins to feel like a modern update on the classic techno formula. It sounds like the future was supposed to sound.

Single 'Vibe Your Love' is a Minimal Techno Soul Ballad that really hits the mark. The spaced out, clinical swooshes in the background providing a wrapping of loneliness to the vocal. 'You & Me' feels like it actually dates back to eighties Detroit - synths stab through the rhythm and the melody is driven and focused. 'Love Your Style' is at once sensual yet tough and uncompromising. This is music for proper warehouses, not nightclubs.

Best of all is 'Arise', a track which manages to feel like the pressure valve on your brain giving in as everything leaks out. The distorted preacher's vocal, calling on the listener to "arise", lays atop a sinister bassline and the track gives you just enough to leave you wanting more. The whole thing smacks of class - less is more and Maceo Plex knows it.

The problem is that he doesn't know that less can also be less. For every track here that serves as a revelation there is another that suffers from being dull and turgid. It is difficult to pinpoint the problem - 'Silo' for example boasts the same stripped back approach as all of the above tracks, plus a touch of brass, but it just feels flaccid in comparison to the best tracks here.

Life Index is a good album, but at 79 minutes there just needs to be less of it. Listening to it in one go just emphasises the highlights and leaves parts of the album feeling cold.

BP x

Life Index is released through Crosstown Rebels on 31 January, available to pre-order from Amazon.co.uk on CD and MP3.

News: Glastonbury announce Emerging Talent Competition 2011

Glastonbury Festival have just announced their Emerging Talent Competition for 2011's festival, giving new unsigned bands across the UK and Ireland the opportunity to win a slot on the main stage. The winner will be in esteemed company - previous winners include Stornoway, We Have Band, the Golden Silvers, the Subways, Ellen and the Escapades and, erm, Scouting For Girls.

At BlackPlastic we are always getting contacted by new unsigned acts - Glastonbury's competition represents a fantastic opportunity to get some exposure so if you are a music maker then we strongly recommend you enter. All styles and genres are eligible and entrance is free and surprisingly hassle free - you simply need to enter a link to where your music can be heard.  It's worth noting you only have a week to enter - the closing date is 5pm Monday 17 January 2011.

BlackPlastic has been selected along with 39 other bloggers to help judge this year's competition and you will have to excuse our blushes as we gush a bit and confess how chuffed we are to have been invited to be associated with such a prize.

You can find details on how to enter along with the full list of blogs that are judging over at the Glastonbury Festivals site... Good luck!

BP x

Video: A Train Wreck - Bearsuit

This starts intriguing and escalates to boisterous and amazing.  There's a slight folky math-rock thing going on in here and it reminds BlackPlastic of under-rated favs of ours, Hot Club De Paris.

This is Bearsuit's second single and proceeds their new album The Phantom Forest, due in February.  The single is available as a free download from the band directly.

BP x

The Obligatory Best of 2010 List - Part Two

Following on from Part One, here they are... Our favourite nine albums of 2010:

9. Crooks & Lovers - Mount Kimbie

This year saw dub step evolve. Having previously felt like an excuse for people who should know better to listen to garage some of the genre's pioneers began to, well, actually pioneer. And the innovation really came from combining the music with other genres. Mount Kimbie's debut is a perfect example - tempered with a bit of intelligent soul you suddenly had a classic on your hands, particularly on the standout 'Before I Move Off'.

8. Total Life Forever - Foals

It shouldn't really have worked... Following their acclaimed status prior to the release of their debut album (and subsequent fall from grace when it disappointed some), Foals returned with a more melodic, accessible and populist album. And it was also the best thing they have produced yet.

Criticism has been levelled at Total Life Forever on the basis that it contains too many songs to appeal to summer festival goers. Which basically means it has too many songs people will actually like. Go figure.

By stripping back the math-rock and building some actual songs Foals made an album containing several of this year's best songs. And it isn't just the sings that shine - the production work from Luke Smith is sublime - a gorgeous, melancholic, sun-bleached feeling runs through the record from the dip-in-the-pool-refreshment of 'Blue Blood' through to the desperate 'What Remains'. With not just one but two completely killer tracks ('Spanish Sahara' and '2 Trees') Total Life Forever is already shaping up to be one of 2010's most overlooked albums in the end of year roundups.

7. InnerSpeaker - Tame Imapala

Whatever you think of Tame Impala - little more than plunderers of the past or innovators kick starting a new genre - it's difficult not to get caught up in it all. Sure, the production is epic - thick basslines, rhythms punched out of solid steel and guitars that encircle the listener in proggy bliss - but it is the songs that will keep you coming back, particularly the apathetic bluesy closer 'I Don't Mind'... It's the stoner equivalent of La Roux's 'Bulletproof' and the weird rave bit halfway through never fails to surprise. Genius.

6. Black City - Matthew Dear

Potentially Dear's magnum-opus, Black City builds on everything that has come before and turns it into something original. Darker than ever, it straddles a variety of emotions, at turns alienated, sexually depraved and wounded and needy. 'You Put A Smell On Me' is like Nine Inch Nail's 'Closer' re-made for 2010 - pure, unadulterated filth of the sort that will have you singing things you really shouldn't in public.

5. The Suburbs - Arcade Fire

BlackPlastic still isn't sure if The Suburbs is as good as either of the last two Arcade Fire albums but the fact that the question even lingers means this is an album that deserves a place on the list. A cleaner and sparser record, but potentially all the more weighty for it. On first listen it seemed to lack stand out moments but repeated listens just demonstrate that this is simply because every track is a highlight.  

4. Klavierwerke - James Blake

Not an album but still one of this year's most significant releases, James Blake seems to be making it his personal mission to upset hardcore dub step fans by tearing up the rule book, taking the genre's best ideas and running off to make something entirely new with them. 'I Only Know (What I Know Now)' is the sound of a man learning from his past mistakes. It is also this year's most emotive five minutes.

3. Vampires With Dreaming Kids / Color Your Life - Twin Sister

Not an album but really a double pack EP, this nonetheless was the sound of one of 2010's most promising bands. With the stripped back aesthetic of the XX, the rawness of early Yeah Yeah Yeahs and what sounds like sterling taste in 1980s pop music at their best the influences combine to make something marvellous, as on the slow burning 'The Other Side of Your Face'. Twin Sister will be ones to watch in 2011.

2. This Is Happening - LCD Soundsystem

If albums were judged on artwork alone This Is Happening would have owned this year. With its minimal type combined with that picture of James Murphy flying through the air in his suit it really felt like a statement of intent.

Whatever. This Is Happening is regardless one of the best things to come out of any stereo this year. With greater focus than Sound of Silver LCD's latest release felt more like a proper album. And with the monstrous bass of 'Dance Yrself Clean', the middle-aged-guy-having-an-epiphany gut-wrencher that is 'All I Want' and the subtly epic 'Home' it also had the tunes. It may not have another 'Someone Great' but it's the sound of one of our times' best bands all grown up.

1. Cosmogramma - Flying Lotus

It says a lot when a record has increasing amounts of praise heaped on it the longer it has been out. He may not have won a Grammy but he has made 2010's best album - a record that fuses genres like they don't even matter. The J Dilla comparisons are perhaps inevitable but Cosmogramma is no mere re-tread - it demonstrates that Flying Lots is one of the most innovative producers of our time.

So what are your thoughts? What did we miss?