Demob Happy

Deconstructed disco 7/10 One of the main men (alongside James Murphy and Tim Goldsworthy) behind DFA and former member of Six-Finger Satellite, Juan Maclean’s debut is damaged electro with a dark heart. For all its inferences to robotic disco, this is not a Daft Punk album (despite the similarity in name to that band’s latest: [...]

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Shock waves 7/10 Minotaur Shock’s second full-length will surely raise his reputation to the level of some of his more overrated peers, namely Four Tet and Manitoba, both of whom seem to have been unjustly hogging the electronica limelight for the last couple of years. ‘Maritime’ take a naval theme as its core imagery but [...]

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Modest mouse 6/10 Mouse on Mars, as the name suggests, often lean towards the cartoonish, anarchic end of electronica, with a tendency to push the envelope of effects and production rather than seek out more emotive content. A lot has been made of the use of vocals on this record but this is hardly something [...]

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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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Dntel work 7/10 I bought this expecting something similar to The Notwist, as it has been widely billed as a seminal ‘indietronica’ album in which Jimmy Tamborello enlisted a host of singers and musicians from the indie scene (including Chris Gunst from Beachwood Sparks, Benjamin Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie and Brian McMahan from [...]

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Unrelenting 3/10 I don’t really see the point of this. Jason Forrest – aka DJ Donna Summer – likes to cut and paste old disco and funk together in a kind of post modern mish-mash that is more IDM than Avalanches. It is click-and-cut of the most filtered, tinny variety, there is nothing of the [...]

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Staring at the Sun 7/10 This is avant-garde music aimed at evoking tangible atmospheres rather than oblique abstraction for its own sake. Besides the false start that is ‘Made in Hong Kong’ – with its inauspicious opening drones that sound like your stereo is melting – Endless Summer delivers its promise of bright, shimmering (albeit [...]

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More fine electronica from the Rotter’s Golf Club 7/10 Weatherall and Tenniswood complete another compelling collection of wigged-out digital funk. Less conceptual than their underwater-themed ‘Stay Down’, more upbeat and house-influenced than the bonged-out downtempo electro of The Fifth Mission (Return to the Flightpath Estate), Tiny Reminders is nevertheless reliably enjoyable and never pretentious. They [...]

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German avant-pop at its finest! 8/10 Make no mistake, this is an indie-pop album. If, like me, you are looking for something a bit more leftfield, you might want to reconsider. This is not to discourage though – a very fine indie-pop album it is, with instantly likeable melodies buoyed by constantly imaginative and tight [...]

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Subtle, emotive electro-pop 8/10 You may find yourself slightly perplexed after the first listen of this album given the collective orgasm seemingly experienced by the music press about Last Exit. It is, however, a subtle, gentle grower. The missing link between Underworld, Talk Talk and New Order, it places delicate, slightly Indie vocal melodies over [...]

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