ALBUMSREVIEWS 6.0
Fake Blood Cells Different Recordings In vein
Having penned a new score to cult 1970s Italian horror flick ‘Suspira’ and — err — contributed to the ‘Twilight’ soundtrack as one half of The Black Ghosts, it’s clear that Theo Keating’s interest in the macabre goes beyond the name of his Fake Blood project. It bleeds over into this debut album too — opener ‘Yes/No’ nods to Mike Oldfield’s ‘Tubular Bells’, famous from ‘The Exorcist’, ‘Phantom Power’ has a dank clank that feels like a dungeon door closing, and the suspense-laden strings of ‘London’ could come from a Hitchcock flick. But the walloping beats throughout still mean ‘Cells’ is designed for nights shaking on the dancefloor rather than shivering alone, with varying results. ‘End Of Days’ and ‘Contact’ are both pumped-up electro-house, but ‘All In The Blink’ — which sounds like Ferry Corsten remixing ‘90s Britpop chancers Dodgy — is a horror show of a whole different kind. Paul Clarke
5.0
Zombie Nation RGB Turbo Recordings The man that time forgot
As a case against evolution, Munich producer Florian Senfler’s fifth album is certainly more convincing than the Creationist argument that God created dinosaur bones to test our faith. For compared to the likes of Boys Noize descended from Zombie Nation’s noisy electro genes, much of ‘RGB’ sounds practically fossilized, and the clanking pots and pans percussion and boiling kettle acid riffs of ‘Pony’ not only sound like Senfler hasn’t progressed since his big millennium hit ‘Kernkraft 400’, but has actually regressed to something more primitive instead. All bloody-minded pounding and huge swathes of distortion, tracks like ‘Meathead’ and ‘Level’ are as lumbering as dinosaurs themselves, and even though the housier ‘Falling’ and the manic electro squiggles of ‘Maingames’ are relatively fleet-footed in comparison, they still pummel you like a brontosaurus with a hangover. Paul Clarke
7.0 Planas
The Long Game Exceptional Blue
Sounds like a Planas
Toby Davies has undergone a makeover. Trading in the creepiness of ‘Miserere’, he’s realized the potential of dubstep as a subdued pop vehicle, relishing the chance to let loose his hitherto closeted soulboy with the aid of a small fleet of vocal foils. So Ed Thomas comes on like a DMZ-savvy Spacek on ‘Breathtaking’, Joe Lean adds a ghostly layer to ‘Cry Wolf’’s baroque bombast, and Claudia Georgette’s ‘Merry Go Round’ considers how Cinematic Orchestra might remodel Floetry. Keen to ensure no one feels left out, there’s also dungeon-clanging dubstep (‘Mr Litvinenko’), soft-focus Detroit techno- soul (‘Petroleum’) and less pleasingly, ‘2 Little 2 Late’’s winebar two-step and ‘Wasabi Thunder’ and ‘Better Days’, both modelled on Rustie’s squealing ‘80s sugar- rush but lacking in fizz. ‘The Long Game’ could be more distinct, then, but as a fluid stab at bolting pop onto UK bass, it’s no embarrassment. Sunil Chauhan
Gerry Read Jummy Fourth Wave Difficult to Read
Gerry Read has a knack for the avant- garde; a young producer who cobbles together samples in a way that casts nods to greats of Detroit’s Third Wave one moment, before crumbling into beatless, lo-fi freeform the next. Deconstructing elements of house, and genres around it, he makes music that borders on academic, teasing various strains to evoke memories and experiences of dancefloors and long nights without ever stating the obvious. Elements of American house, UK house, r&b, turntablism, jazz, and even bass music are imprecisely slung together in ways that shouldn’t make sense, but do. Amongst those wayward segues and hotchpotch aggregations lies a fascinating debut album that begs multiple listens, leaving us anticipating Read’s next move. What will that be? We have absolutely no idea, and, perhaps the best part about it is, neither does he. Zara Wladawsky
8.5
Toro Y Moi
Anything In Return Carpark
9.0 No damaged goods
WHERE Chaz Bundick’s first album, ‘Causers Of This’, was born to the glitchy, compression-heavy funk of Flying Lotus or, going back further, J Dilla, his third album ‘Anything In Return’ seems to have encountered the dub sounds of the UK. Whatever the exposure, he’s cast off the ‘chillwave’ label that was glued to him in the summer of 2009. It opens dramatically with ‘Harm In Change’, a slow-mo garage anthem, complete with a rolling bassline and female rave howls. It segues into ‘Say That’, a shivering, broken breakbeat laden with pianos and pirate radio aspirations. It’s West London via South Carolina. Still, there are the
hip-hop elements and the sun- drenched Beach Boys harmonies, but he feels like he’s really letting go here, hugging his inner Pharrell-esque popstar. And it’s genuinely, at times air-punchingly thrilling. His vocals too feel far more upfront, like maybe he’s found his voice and he’s decided that it sounds pretty fucking good. See ‘Day One’, a summer anthem thawing mid-winter, or ‘Never Matter’, an ‘80s boogie smash for 2013. This isn’t just hipster catnip — though it is doubtless that too. ‘Anything In Return’ has the substance to back up just how irresistible it is. Ben Arnold
djmag.com 055
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