Album Review: Death Magic - Health

Death Magic arrives more than five years since Health released their last full studio album amid a swirling cacophony of noise and smoke that seeps out of the speakers like a sort of toxic presence. It sucks all the air out of the room before accusingly asking you what the hell you have been up to for the last half a decade, because Health have been doing THIS.

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Death Magic - Health

Following Get Color and their second remix album ::DISCO2, Health's soundtrack to the Rockstar video game Max Payne 3 pointed to their future. More cinematic in scope, the sound exhibited on that record felt distilled and amplified. Where the lo-fi production of The band's first two albums helped create the aesthetic the band are known for, their newer sound is all the darker for removing the blinds and letting the sheer volume stand tall and pure. Sometimes a little polish actually lets you hear more.

On original song Tears, taken from that Max Payne soundtrack, Health experimented with a more melodic sound combined with their trademark wall-of-noise - the result was an emotive centrepiece for the game's climatic final scenes, but more than that it stood out as the band's strongest work to date. Death Magic is what happens if you extend that widescreen ambition, a heart of darkness and an ear for pop music into full album territory, and it sounds a lot like the future.

After opening track Victim seeps into your skull it is brutally savaged by the slamming and acerbic bass of Stonefist, a track that feels like a break-up letter from your soulmate delivered wrapped around a brick. It is a stunning statement of how Health see music in 2015. Having toured with Nine Inch Nails in 2008 it is easy to see the LA band as Trent Reznor's natural successors, and if they are then Death Magic just might be their Downward Spiral. 

The melodic edge and pop melodies introduced on Tears, and now here on Death Magic, only make what surrounds them feel more ferocious. The synths and big chorus of Flesh World (UK) rumble through a darkly blank vacant space, like Joy Division lost in the corridors or a warehouse rave, complete with lasers and a smoke machine.

And between those brief moments of light there is so much darkness. Early interlude track Courtship gets a sequel, and it is a pummelling assault on the senses. Even when the vocals echo through the darkness with innocent melody the vocals are often loaded like a switchblade, deeply cynical tells of a relationship so dysfunctional. 

Only on Life, positioned at Death Magic's middle, does this apparent discomfort ease... Chants of "I don't know what I want, know what I don't, know what I want... No, nobody knows, nobody does, nobody knows" sound like they could be a confused anthem for a confused generation. It's weirdly uplifting - an abandonment of trying to understand and control everything.

The feeling you are left with is that Death Magic is what happens if you extend a widescreen ambition, a heart of darkness and an ear for pop music into full album territory. And it sounds a lot like the future.

Death Magic is out now through Loma Vista Recordings. Order on iTunes.

Video: Civil War - MIYNT

Stockholm artists MIYNT has just unveiled the video for her sultry debut single Civil War. Taking the vocal stylings of Banks and applying it to some bone-rattling bass, Civil War hits like a wall of sound. The video and song play with the concept of waves, an analogy to the shifting power and rhythmic cycle of love.

Civil War / Nick Drake is out on B3SCI Records on 21 August, available for pre-order on 7" or through iTunes here. Check out the video for Civil War below, or stream both tracks from the forthcoming single together with MIYNT's stunning cover of Britney Spears' Baby One More Time.

Premiere: Away From Me (Michah Remix) - CHINAH

Hailing from the cool Nørrebro district of Copenhagen, three-piece R&B outfit CHINAH recently dropped their debut single Away From Me, layering vocalist Fine Glindvad's silky vocals over Simon Kjær's guitar-work and Simon Andersson's minimal electronic production to form a delicately constructed track with bruised confidence. 

Toronto-based producer Michah has transformed the gentle original into a smooth and slow house version. Michah applies a deft-touch, giving Away From Me a lift that sees it transformed whilst retaining the gentle sophistication of the original - the production wide-enough to fall right into.

On the original version, the band explain: "'Away From Me' was written in the early spring of 2014. It was the first song from our EP, and it really made us find the sound we've been confident about for the rest of the EP. We wanted to cut the song to the core with as few layers as possible."

Check out the premiere of Michah's remix below, and the original further down.

Stream / Download: Blade (Tidal Wave of Love) - Ben Khan

Off of the back of his two EPs, last year's 1992 and more recently 1000, Ben Khan has become one to watch in the R&B space... His thick, sinewy electronic production taping into the best of R&B and electronic music to create something unique - funky and soulful.

Khan has just released a new track, Blade (Tidal Wave of Love), and it's another demonstration of what makes this artist so compelling... Deep, slow and dark soulful vibes. You can listen to the track below and grab it as a free download on Khan's Tumblr.

Album Review: The Most Lamentable Tragedy - Titus Andronicus

Titus Andronicus have maintained the position of "band most likely to sabotage themselves" since 2010's break-through album The Monitor thrust them a little further into the limelight than perhaps vocalist Patrick Stickles would claim to like. The Monitor was an album that used the American Civil War as a lens through to tell a series of autobiographical vignettes and already felt like the most overblown form of punk you could possibly imagine.

Having returned to a more stripped down sound on third-album Local Business, on follow-up The Most Lamentable Tragedy Titus Andronicus appear to be smashing down to looming heights of The Monitor by going an order of magnitude bigger. Their fourth studio album is therefore a sprawling five-act rock opera consisting of 29-tracks across 93-minutes. A twisted fictional concept album of sorts, TMLT tells the story of a protagonist in deep despair who meets his doppelgänger, visually identical but his opposite in terms of disposition.  This encounter pitches them in to a revelatory journey.

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All of which will be almost impossible to discern for those that are only half paying attention... And that is the thing with Stickles' ambition - it appears to be applied to make casual enjoyment as challenging as possible. TMLT is packed with ramshackle bar-band moments, references to previous work and killer tunes recalling Thin Lizzy and Springsteen at turns - just don't expect to uncover all of of its gems without wading through a heavily layered and complex album. 

The individual moments are glorious. I Lost My Mind, across two distinct versions that book-end a short palindrome-like section, sounds like Meat Loaf and the boss delivering Bat out of Born to Run - rambunctious, epic urgent and nihilistic. Come On, Siobhán is a damn-near optimistic love song, complete with (heart-tugging) strings from Owen Pallet (who arranged the strings across the whole album). It it immediately followed by a switchblade cover of the Pogues' A Pair of Brown Eyes and together both feel like TMLT's most honest moments. 

Lead single Dimed Out lives up to its title and manages to be the most maxed out moment here - a beer-swilled, obnoxious and vomit-encrusted party record that kicks down your front door, wakes up your neighbours, raids your drinks cabinet and leaves shortly after punching out a testy 'fuck you' to your boss on your now-stolen iPhone.

Yet all these great moments come obscured beneath the weight of everything The Most Lamentable Tragedy tries to be. When your previous stand-out album utilises the American civil war as a central mechanic there really only is one way to go. Nine-minute epics (A More Perfect Union), silent interludes, confusing song naming methods and complex narratives all play their part in making TMLT a little harder to unpick for all but the hardcore. You can’t help but wonder if that is rather the point...

The Most Lamentable Tragedy is out now on Merge Records, available on iTunes [affiliate link].