electropop
Lisa-Marie Ferla
There have been those who have uncharitably suggested that Crystal World is in fact a sixth Ladytron album rather than the solo debut of the band’s frontwoman, Helen Marnie. It’s an easy, if lazy, conclusion to jump to when said album flirts with many of the same electro-dreampop calling cards and features a bandmate on production credits, but take a trip into Marnie’s world and there is plenty to set it apart.Curiously it’s on the vocals that the differences become most obvious. This is still the same Marnie of the sometimes sultry, sometimes glacial persona she adopts on the best known of Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
AlunaGeorge deserve to be lauded as one of this year’s great singles bands solely on the strength of “Attracting Flies” and “White Noise”, their collaboration with electro outfit Disclosure. The London duo - featuring the purring vocals of Aluna Francis and George Reid’s sassy production - have been gaining attention in all the right places over the past 12 months, which gives their delayed debut a lot to live up to.That the big, distorted hook and kiss-off chorus of "...Flies", so perfect in its subtlety, are the catchiest things on Body Music is a little misleading. It means that the first Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
At the risk of coming over a bit Daily Mail, my, hasn’t she grown up? I refer not to the career management decisions that have seen the former Disney Channel star turned head Belieber handed dubious photoshoots and sexed-up roles in Harmony Korine films, but rather to the fact that on Stars Dance the just-shy-of-21-year-old sounds about 35.It’s a well-established pattern, so it’s hard not to be cynical: child star reborn with raunchy new image; a first video (featured below) replete with writhing, heavy breathing and lyrics with a suitably subjugated message despite the appearance of sexual Read more ...
joe.muggs
The part-Japanese Brit Maya Jane Coles displays elaborate asymmetric hair, interesting piercings and enormous tattoos in her moody photoshoots, makes sounds that are uniformly smooth and high-gloss, and has a sonic palette that takes in populist trance, chillout and straight-up pop music as well as more nerd-cred underground sounds. And in an era of techno that's been dominated by Berlin-centric cosmopolitanisms – by sophisticated internationalist crowds with creative haircuts and intricately-knotted scarves as well as sometimes tediously tasteful musical minimalism – it'd be very easy to Read more ...
joe.muggs
It took nine years between the first and second instalments of this series, and another 22 years to make the third. And that's one of the least strange things about this record. The production team of B.E.F. (aka Human League / Heaven 17 members Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh) have dedicated themselves to unusual cover versions, in the past featuring guest vocalists from Gary Glitter to Tina Turner to Paula Yates, and they are still on a mission to rework classic songs in a high-gloss 1980s pop style with very peculiar results indeed.There are a lot of high points here. Sandie Shaw yelps her Read more ...
James Williams
The ICA was the perfect location for the UK debut of hotly tipped new duo Tomorrow’s World, consisting of Air’s Jean-Benoit Dunckel and English synth-rockers New Young Pony Club’s ivory tickler Lou Hayter. The venue added a prestigious edge to what promised to be an auspicious occasion. A scant crowd suggested this was more of a test run than a full-blown debut, but they needn’t have worried about the reaction. Their music spoke for itself.Support came from another alumnus of London’s New Young Pony Club, guitarist Igor Volk. His set was impressive, the newly-released single "Voice" really Read more ...
joe.muggs
Alison Moyet is not just one of the great voices in pop, she's one of the most likeable figures. A brilliantly no-nonsense character, she consistently skewers music industry pomposity, laughs in the face of the expectations the world has of female artists, and generally does precisely what she wants while retaining an abnormally acute sense of the absurdness of it all.All of which seems to have fed into the minutes, which is a fabulously immature album – in the sense that this is clearly a singer-songwriter having nothing but fun in the studio, like a kid in a candy shop. With production Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Continuing its voyage through Scandinavia’s music, theartsdesk opens the latest chapter in Norway with Still Life With Eggplant, the 16th album from Trondheim’s prolific, long-lived, occasionally challenging and always vital Motorpsycho.Their last album, 2012’s The Death Defying Unicorn, was an orchestrated collaboration with jazz composer and musician Ståle Storløkken which was performed at Oslo’s opera house. The one before that, 2010’s Heavy Metal Fruit, included the 20-minute “Gullible's Travails” and was almost as musically elaborate as …Unicorn. Their new album, the magnificent Still Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Shuggie Otis: Inspiration Information/Wings of LoveShuggie Otis's vanishing act after the release of his 1974 album Inspiration Information belatedly created one of pop’s great what-ifs. However, it only became so in the Nineties after the album was recognised as a soul treasure. David Byrne reissuing the album on his Luaka Bop label in 2001 didn’t plug the information gap, and Otis remained in the shadows. Now though, with this new reissue, the enigmatic soul auteur has resurfaced to supplement the album with a series of unreleased tracks dating from 1971 to 2000. Whatever else he was doing Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Shaking The Habitual’s centrepiece – the seventh of its 14 tracks – is the 19-minute “Old Dreams Waiting to be Realized”. A tone which ebbs in and out, it’s occasionally underpinned by distant rhythmic colour. Although thoughts inevitably turn to the similarly lengthy “SDSS1416+13B (Zercon, A Flagpole Sitter)", the 22-minute amelodic experience exemplifying Scott Walker’s recent Bish Bosch, the astonishing Shaking the Habitual is, over its 97 minutes, an album retaining connections with what is recognisably music. Even so, it’s still pretty far out.Karin Dreijer Andersson and Olof Dreijer – Read more ...
joe.muggs
The portents were good. The single “Heaven” emerged with all the melodrama and crypto-religiosity hardcore Depeche Mode fans have loved – Dave Gahan hitting some notes that suggested he's spotted certain tics that Muse's Matt Bellamy has nicked from him and gone “ahaa no, THIS is how it's done.” It's a dirge in the best sense, a gorgeously crushing piece with – thankfully – digitally degraded sounds and robotic drum-rolls putting the guitars and pianos in their place: this is Depeche Mode at peace both with their stadium Goth stature and their history as electronic innovators. The follow-up “ Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
A giant arm sweeps across the rapt audience. The newly anointed onlookers all wear the same, white-framed, glasses. A chant is heard:“We are the robots.” Those congregating in the over-sized shoebox of Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall could be at a cult meeting. In gathering to pay respect, the audience share more than a passion for Kraftwerk. They also all wear the same 3D glasses. Performing their 1978 album The Man Machine in full, Kraftwerk restate the uncertainty of the natural order. Whether prophetic or not, their message still resonates.Introducing The Man Machine before its release to the Read more ...