Demob Happy

FIRST PUBLISHED AT THE LINE OF BEST FIT
7/10
Synth pop is apparently making a big comeback in 2009, I say apparently because I don’t listen to the radio, watch TV or live in an English-speaking country, so it’s easy to shield myself from the probably excessive hype surrounding artists such as, say, Little Boots, Empire Of [...]

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FIRST PUBLISHED AT THE LINE OF BEST FIT
It’s not a shame about Fever Ray
8/10
I’d just finished mildly mocking Bon Iver’s Auto-Tune ballad ‘In the Woods’ from his recent ‘Blood Bank EP‘ when Fever Ray’s Vocoder-heavy debut album landed in my inbox with a mechanical clunk. Fever Ray is Karin Dreijer Andersson, one half of Sweden’s [...]

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Switched on
7/10
Fujiya & Miyagi - also known as the very un-Japanese and un-duo-like David Best, Steve Lewis and Matt Hainsby - are part of a indie/electronica scene, including the likes of Baikonour (aka Jean-Emmanuel Kreiger) and Imitation Electric Piano, that seem to share in Lee Adams a mercenary percussionist. Like Baikonour, Fujiya & Miyagi blend [...]

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Gang Gang goes bang

8.5/10
FIRST PUBLISHED AT THE LINE OF BEST FIT
Long-time darlings of New York’s ultra-hip, art-conscious underground music scene, Gang Gang Dance look braced to make a wider breakthrough with their new album ‘Saint Dymphna‘, released in the UK on Warp. Like their contemporaries Out Hud, Gang Gang Dance makes a hybrid of post-rock [...]

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Quite interesting, incidentally …
6/10
I have been a keen advoate of all things Damon Albarn post-Graham Coxon (i.e., Blur’s ‘Think Tank‘ and beyond) so was understandably quite excited by the album release of ‘Monkey, Journey to the West‘. I had not seen the Chinese opera-spectacular which this album scores but I didn’t let that dissuade me [...]

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Geek chic
7/10
If like I did you heard ‘Coming On Strong‘ after their second, break-through album ‘The Warning‘, you might be wondering where the big tunes are. There is nothing as stand-out here as 2006’s stunning double-wammy of singles ‘Boy From School’ and ‘Over and Over’.
Nevertheless, ‘Coming on Strong‘ sets the template for Hot [...]

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Without Walls
8/10
Despite his reputation as arch studio boffin, producer Sascha Ring - aka Apparat - makes unapologetically beautiful music. Unlike some of his IDM peers, Ring is not interested so much in abrasion or near-mathematical deconstruction, but with music that swells and soars with classical grandeur. Among current producers, he bears a resemblance in tone [...]

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Race In to Battles
8/10
Call them Math Rock, Postrock, call them whatever, Battles are a progressive act in the truest sense of the word. Whereas aforementioned genres can conjure images of po-faced musical purism, Battles’ sound is approached with a maximilist, more-is-more attitude. There are shades of Tortoise’s jazz-rock leanings here, ooioo’s tribal freak-outs, Animal Collective’s [...]

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“… now you see it’s sucking you in!”
8/10
I found James Murphy’s first album a complete turn-off: the studied cool, the nods and winks to oblique musical references, the ‘tongue-in-cheek’ lyrics. LCD Soundsystem has even been described as dance-punk nostalgia for music journalists. The in-jokery and general calculated irony seemed like cold artifice, dispassionate. The Sound [...]

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Beck at his best
8/10
Unless you are a die-hard fan, of which I suspect there are many, Beck’s prolific career seems to slip in and out of my musical radar. 2002’s sombre, sometimes po-faced, Sea Change was the last time I bought a Beck album, one which I now feel hasn’t stood the test of [...]

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