Demob Happy

FIRST PUBLISHED AT THE LINE OF BEST FIT
Whiter than white
5.5/10
Norwegian producer Erlend Øye could pass as a modern day Arthur Russell. He may not play the violin but he does have the curious distinction of being at once a popular house and electronica artist/DJ and one half of Simon and Garfunkel-esque folk outfit Kings of [...]

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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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“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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Never say never again
7/10
I was a bit wary of this latest album from the New York-based collective due to reports of cheesy female vocals being added into the mix. In fact, this album is a distinct and largely successful departure from the STREET DAD template, stripping away the post-rock inflections in favour of ESG-vocals and [...]

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