Demob Happy

Beak>- Beak>
6.5/10
FIRST PUBLISHED AT THE LINE OF BEST FIT
Subterranean bass throbs, some cod-ghostly wailing and vaguely arabesque improvisations on a rusty sounding organ … ’Backwell’ is the opener of the self-titled debut album by Beak>, a new band including Portishead’s Geoff Barrow. With its slighty nauseating retro synths fanning out mechanically over chugging motorik, ‘Blackwell’ signposts [...]

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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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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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“… 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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Gnarly debut
7/10
Much of the reviews for St Elsewhere evaulate all the tracks in relation to its mindblowing single ‘Crazy’. While it is probably pertinent to mention that there are no other tracks that reach the sublime level of that song, it may also pertinent to say that Crazy is one of the best songs of [...]

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“Hot Chip will break your legs, snap off your head”
8/10
Genre-bending Hot Chip have not only released some of the singles of the year but one of its best albums. As with Gorillaz and Gnarls Barkley recently, mid-way into the ‘noughties’ we are starting to see some real wit and invention in pop music that may [...]

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