ALBUMSREVIEWS 8.0
Simian Mobile Disco Live
Sasha
Delicacies/Simian Mobile Disco SMD come alive
Live dance music albums are almost al- ways shite. The concept is an anomaly. The tunes sound the same, unless you’re Orbital or Underworld, who both improvised and added loads of extra bits to their tracks to make them worthwhile. Luckily, Simian Mobile Disco can be added to their lofty perch. Acting as a kind of breakneck ‘Best Of’ (so far), this live recorded, continuous mix is massive-sounding, stadium- ready dance music with none of the crassness of the mainstream. Eminently danceable, melodic, at times rough and raw, others dreamlike, it showcases how far the duo have come from their electro house beginnings. The crowd roars add a frisson of excitement, and the moment the downtempo soul/ electronic axis of ‘Seraphim’ gives way to the Beth Ditto-featuring disco bomb ‘Cruel Intentions’ is a true spine tingler. For newbies and veteran fans
alike.Ben Murphy
Invol<3r Last Night On Earth Get invol<3d
While many wring their hands over the relevance of the commercial mix, Sasha powers through with a double album featuring wall-to-wall Sasha remixes, one disc dedicated to the club, one brimming with, yup, beatless reworks. If the form is a little dated, the tracklist isn’t: Foals, Little Dragon, The xx — dude’s been paying attention, albeit a reliance on “credible” indie makes for a somewhat aggressively middle-of-the- road experience. There’s none of the light and shade of the previous instal- ments; ever fancied ‘Chained’ spun out over an amniotic throb for seven minutes? Go ahead, live on the edge! Things are less constipated when he drops the 6 Music posturing, the buffed chrome of James Zabiela’s ‘The Healing’ picking up the ever mounting slack, not helped by some bumpy blends. Five years between mixes? You kind of expect more. Louise Brailey
6.0
Rhino/Metalheadz Epic drum & bass round-up
8.5
Goldie The Alchemist: the Best Of 1992- 2012
If anyone in dance deserves a ‘Best Of’, it’s Goldie. While we’re all familiar with ‘Timeless’, that’s only a small fraction of the story, as this three-CD mammoth sets out to prove. Disc one is mostly about the early ‘90s, with tunes both as Goldie and as Rufige Kru — from the pioneering hardcore/early d&b inter- face of ‘Dark Rider’ to the still terrifying and futuristic 1992 bullet ‘Terminator’ — but there’s brilliant latter day cuts like the dubstep-influenced ‘Shanghai Dub’, too. CD two has several key cuts from ‘Timeless’, like ‘Angel’, but also the Detroit broken beat flavour of ‘Latin Skin’, the soulful ‘Freedom’, the brand-new ‘Single Petal of a Rose’ (all plaintive male vocals and chattering halftime beats), and the brutal machi- nations of ‘VIP Rider’s Ghost’. The third is all about the remixes — Goldie’s own and versions by key confidants. From obvious classics to lesser-known jewels, this does justice to his
legacy.Ben
Major Lazer
Free the Universe Because Music Carnival freak
With guest spots from Bruno Mars, Wyclef Jean and brostep idiot Flux Pavilion, the second Major Lazer album provokes an interesting question — who would you most like to slap first? Followed by ‘who thought getting Shaggy over a teeth-grating EDM breakdown would be a good idea?’ The first question you’ll have to work out yourself, but the answer to the second is Diplo, who has dressed the digital dancehall of 2009’s ‘Guns Don’t Kill People….Lazers Do’ in some unsightly candy raver clothing. Luckily, there is some good amidst all the bad and ugly here — such as ‘You’re No Good For Me’ featuring Santigold and Vybz Kartel, or the sweet ‘Get Free’ featuring Amber of Dirty Projectors — and whilst the Jamaican MCs seem slightly sidelined in favour of the international stars this time, they still rule the more bass- heavy tracks, which give you a hard slap themselves. Paul Clarke
6.0
8.0 Coma
In Technicolor Kompakt Karmacoma
Cologne’s Marius Bubat and Georg Conrad have been feeding their gift for melody into techno’s grid system for the last two years, and their debut sees them refining their pop nous. ‘Technicolor’ is a perfect fit with the fellow Colognians at Kompakt, who’ve a reputation for wedding cheesy impulses with ascetic formalism — okay, it isn’t boundary-breaking (when was the last time Kompakt was that?) but there’s joy to be mined in its simplicity, from the low-key funk shapes of ‘Maybach’ to ‘Scales’, a single keyboard tracing scales over fibrous, white noise. However, tracks like the aptly-titled ‘Cycle’ display the same approach to slow-release euphoria that labelmate The Field has refined. Elsewhere, the blissful miniature ‘The Great Escape’ is a highlight — its baroque chords, flexes of synth and treated Kraftwerkian vocals feel like mainlining sunshine. An exercise in exquisitely judged under- statement. Louise Brailey
072 Mr. C
Smell the Coffee Superfreq Strong, tall and dark?
You can’t keep a good man down, or so they say. Now based in Los Angeles and reinvigorating his Superfreq label after a few year’s hiatus — which included its proprietor embarking on an acting career — the former frontman from The Shamen, former part owner of the legendary London club The End and all- round house and techno stalwart, Mr. C, aka Richard West, has returned to the fold with his first album in a decade. West was always a better DJ — with a dizzyingly encyclopedic collection — than a producer, and though there are moments here, ‘Smell the Coffee’ is fairly standard tech house fare. He’s still partial to a spiritual spoken word vocal too, as evidenced in ‘Synchronic- ity’ and ‘The Future’. But there’s some range on display — ‘Wake Up’ is lively and energetic with stabs of acid, while ‘War Games’ is dark and brooding. Ben Arnold
6.0 Owiny Sigoma Band
Power Punch!!! Brownswood Recordings Kenya/UK connection
International musical collaborations, when they work, can be great. This one, though, is something else. Kenya’s Joseph Nyamungu (multi instrumental- ist) and Charles Owoko (Luo drummer) combine with Londoners Jesse Hackett (vox/keys) Louis Hackett (bass), Sam Lewis (guitar), Chris Morphitis (bou- zouki/guitar) and Tom Skinner (drums) to create something that sounds entirely new. On their second album, African vocals and rhythms merge with resonant sub bass tones; Kenyan instruments collide with Jesse’s English pipes; punk funk, Afro beat, folk sounds and modern electronics are melted down and reformed in a new image. ‘Owiny Techno’ imagines a new minimal beat that might move the floor at an underground club night in Mombasa, while ‘Lucas Malore’ sounds like Arthur Russell jamming with Byrne and Eno. Hugely refreshing — one of 2013’s best albums, no
doubt.Ben Murphy
www.djmag.ca
9.0 Loadstar
Future Perfect Ram Stadia await
Offering a bombastic stadium-rave sound similar to that of Chase & Status and Nero, Bristol duo Loadstar are well on their way to becoming the next drum & bass/breaks/dubstep act to conquer the mainstream and have indie kids throwing freaky shapes at festivals. Setting its stall out with shamelessly grandiose curtain-opener ‘Do You Feel Me?’ — featuring motormouthed MC-of-the-moment Scruffizer — ‘Future Perfect’ is 15 tracks of summer-block- buster dramatics and air-punching energy, with every lull in the high- octane action merely the calm before yet another storm of mega-drops and power-chords. It’s big, it’s ridiculous, it’s self-aware and it’s sort of amazing. An eclectic roster of guest vocalists helps to prevent the album from feeling like a predictable series of peaks and troughs, but also holds it together as a cohesive, ambitious, impressive whole. Joe Madden
8.0
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88