Demob Happy

Intoxicating Man 9/10 Serge Gainsbourg is criminally underrated outside France. Listening to this comprehensive best of compilation it is evident that there was more to him than the sleazy Gallic rogue that is stereotypically presented in the media. By contrast, ‘Initials SG‘ reveals Gainsbourg to be a restless sonic innovator. While his lackadaisical, half-spoken vocal [...]

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“Drink till I’m drunk, smoke till i’m senseless” 10/10 Every generation has music that defines their era and in the mid-nineties it was the output of Massive Attack, Tricky and Portishead that has the greatest resonance. Like watching ‘This Life’ these albums transport you to a specific time and place: pre-millenium, pre-9-11, pre-Blair… Although they [...]

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The Autumnal Crush 7/10 Is electronica dead? Its certainly quite easy to trace the influences of Chris Clark’s Body Riddle. There are the tape-damaged keyboards patented by Boards of Canada; the rough jazzy breaks and dusty sampling of early DJ Shadow, whose influence over electronica has been understated; and the sped-up glockenspiels popularised by Kieren [...]

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Feelgood by numbers 7/10 I resisted buying this album for a long time as I wrongly judged this to be a fairly unoriginal concept. In fact, on paper, it still is an unoriginal concept – a heady mash-up of 70s samples and breaks – but it is pulled off by a verve and audacity lacking [...]

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Monkey business 8.5/10 Demon Days improves massively from the Gorillaz debut with an album chock full of memorable, innovative pop, garnished with effervescent production. If anything, the cartoon imagery (or you could call it marketing) sticks less easily to this album, with moments of folksy downbeat like ‘Every Planet we Reach is Dead’ sounding like [...]

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Well read? 6/10 On paper this seemed a match made in heaven. Scott Herren’s masterful rythmic programming pared up with The Books’ airy collage folk seeming destined to bring out the best in both: giving the former added space and organic texture and the latter much-need structure and a bit of funk. To begin with, [...]

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Music for scary documentaries 6/10 Dan Berridge’s third album proper is perhaps his most accomplished but also his least appealing. Whereas his debut ‘Compassion’ raised the bar for sample-based music with its haunted torch songs crafted from forgotten (and not-so-forgotten) vinyl, follow-up ‘The Vessel’ took a largely-unsuccessful gamble with a male vocal lead. The return [...]

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Who put the fire out? 6/10 Manitoba’s follow up to Up in Flames, in the new guise of Caribou (owing to a bizarre lawsuit over copyright infringement) lacks the vivacity and capacity to suprise of its predecessor. Its largely tepid, plodding stuff, replete with the same swirling (but now overfamiliar) psychedelics and drum breaks but [...]

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Beats ‘n’ pieces 6/10 Boom Bip travels a fairly worn road with his blend of instrumental hip hop and electronica. There are some great moments but by and large this is fairly uninspired stuff. Opener ‘Roads Must Roll’ is blissed-out trip hop complete with tuneful scratching and violins, while ‘Third Stream’ is all clunking rythmns [...]

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Nu-school electro 7/10 Scott Herron’s Prefuse 73 is a combination of Warp-label glitch and instrumental hip hop that has him adored by IDM merchants and headz alike. It is not nearly as abrasive and uncompromising as some writers would lead you to believe, but rather a heady mash up of new-school electro and (largely instrumental) [...]

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