review round-up XV: 2011 second half, vol. 1 [electronic]

about time? i've been, apparently, much too busy writing about music this year (as you'll see) to post any writing about music up here. now, in one massive lump that probably completely undermines the whole point of the concept of blogging, i present to you just about all the record reviews i wrote from july through december 2011, for All Music Guide, Cowbell Magazine (R.I.P.), Magnet Magazine, and (a regular outlet for record reviews for the first time since i started writing for them) Philadelphia City Paper.

in three installments, sorted by "genre," broadly speaking. within each installment, i've set the shorter, blurby CP reviews apart from the longer AMG and magazine reviews, and each grouping is in rough order of how much i liked em...

Ada: Meine Zarten Pfoten review

Like Isolée's Pampa Records bow in January, Meine Zarten Pfoten (which translates, brilliantly, to "My Tender Paws") marks the fervently-awaited follow-up to one of mid-decade "minimal" electronica's most appealing and personable documents, in this case 2004's phenomenal Blondie. Pfoten, true to its title, veers far from that album's Teutonic bleep-and-thump backbone in search of gentler, plusher, sensual pastures: bossa-tinged, witchily cooed opener "Faith" (a Luscious Jackson cover, of all things); the Cornelius-like chime and sway of "On the Mend"; "Happy Birthday"'s cheery throb and playfully warped vocals. It's only after the delectably burbling synthesizer "Intro" (which arrives, quirkily enough, at the album's midpoint) that we get something properly house-derived and dancefloor-plausible with "At The Gate"'s moody dark-disco whirr, and then it's perhaps the least distinguished thing here. But "going soft" doesn't mean Michaela Dippel's lost her edge. Don't equate organic delicacy and vocal abundance with a lapse into feeble easy-listening: there's as much spunk, production clarity, and inventiveness here as ever. And, as demonstrated by a sparkling, unlisted transformation of Little Joy's "Keep Me In Mind," she hasn't lost her knack for surprising indie-rock covers either.

Hercules & Love Affair: Blue Songs review

It's second-album time for Andy Butler's shape-shifting, fervently classicist dance-music troupe, and the big stories seem to be that there've been some change-ups in the vocal department (farewell Antony; welcome newcomers Shaun Wright and Aerea Negrot) and that the retro-revivalist reference points have been updated from '70s golden-era disco to jacking turn-of-the-'90s house (which is really only half-true; peep the stately, string-laden strut of "Painted Eyes" for proof.) Oh, and that there's no single to match the epoch-making rapture that was "Blind." So be it: Butler's production prowess remains as magnificent (and, despite his manifest reverence for past masters from Patrick Cowley to Marshall Jefferson to Arthur Russell, as distinctive) as ever, and the slightly wider net he casts here (lest we forget, the debut was plenty varied too) simply makes for more facets to his mirrorball – including, perhaps dubiously positioned at the album's center, a pair of flat-out gorgeous ballads. True blue is more like it.

Dixon: Live At Robert Johnson review

The last installment in the Live at Robert Johnson mix series -- only the eighth in a brief but fruitful two-year run for the eponymous Frankfurt nightclub -- was announced as not only the end of the line for the still-young series, but also, more regrettably, the final mix offering from the masterful DJ Dixon, whose past efforts have included the excellent Body Language 4 and (in collaboration with Âme and Henrik Schwarz) The Grandfather Paradox. In any event, Live at Robert Johnson, Vol. 8 finds both the series and Dixon's mix career going out on a high note, with a very satisfying, beautifully paced, highly personal, and idiosyncratic selection. Probably the mix's most notable idiosyncrasy -- aside from its penchant for sometimes-effective, sometimes-distracting, earnestly intoned spoken vocals -- is its extreme patience: although a nominal pulse gradually emerges after the first few tracks, it's not until over 20 minutes in -- partway through Agoria's genially shuffling "For One Hour" -- that we get anything which could be properly called a beat, and (strangely for a so-called "live" set) a full 45 before the overarching moody languor fully gives way to dancefloor release. Don't think of it as merely an extended build-up though, but as a necessary and integral part of the journey: Ursula Bogner's embryonic dabblings, Barnt's kosmische clusters, Dominique's languid, drifting lounge noodles, and Hauschka's elegant, prepared-piano fantasia calmly giving way to Scalde's soulful-operatic wailing, Hatikvah's dubbed-out rumination, and the slow-moving, gently epic majesty of star-studded Kraut-techno supergroup Cologne Tape's "Render 2." All that brooding and spaciousness make the final emergence of a full-on house groove, in a bespoke edit of Mark E's warmly uplifting "Call Me" (featuring yet another spoken vocal, an interpolation of "Ain't No Mountain High Enough") all the more magical, priming us for the thumping disco jack and percolating synths of Roman Flugel's "Dishes and Wishes" and (after one last dip into moody, melancholic murk with Bruno Gauthier's darkly dubby "Existing Reality") the peerless, purely pleasure-inducing finale of Osunlade's fiercely funky deep-soul cut "Envision" (in a Dixon edit of Âme's remix), and Todd Terje's joyous, synth-dappled anthem "Snooze 4 Love." It's a shame the party has to end so soon, but such is life; with Live, Dixon leaves us fully living it and beckoning us to do the same.

Four Tet: FabricLive 59 review

In contrast to Kieran Hebden's previous DJ mix efforts as Four Tet, such as his kaleidoscopically genre-jumping DJ-Kicks installment, his entry in the Fabriclive series plays things surprisingly straight, largely limiting his selections to a narrow stripe of electronic dance music, and for the most part linking them together in a reasonably smooth, utilitarian fashion. The set's relative focus and club-mindedness is perhaps less of a surprise coming in the wake of 2010's There Is Love in You, Hebden's most floor-friendly record to date, although here he swaps that album's gentle house explorations for a headfirst plunge into U.K. garage and 2-step, with a bucketload of hopelessly obscure, decade-old tracks unearthed and cleverly slotted alongside strikingly simpatico cuts of more recent and wide-ranging vintage: Floating Points' slinky, samba-fied "Sais"; Burial's poignantly percolating "Street Halo." (Hebden even manages to sneak in a tiny bite of his pal Dan Snaith's early twee IDM, sandwiched between Apple's propulsive U.K. funk and Big Bird's sinewy old-school garage.) Most of the tracks here are texturally minimal and strictly beat-focused, and nearly all of them feature at least a handful of distinct percussive lines set up in opposition to create complex, hypnotic, ineffably funky polyrhythms, keying into Hebden's signature love of repetition and organically off-kilter rhythmic overlap. Not content to completely just let things ride out, Hebden paces the proceedings (and pays homage to Fabric the club, a key inspiration for this London-centric affair) with crowd-chatter field recordings sourced from the club itself, bookending the mix and separating it into halves that are each additionally prefaced (somewhat incongruously) by a small palate-cleansing dose of 1980s Euro-synth ambience. The flow is further broken up by occasional (and somewhat distracting) dropouts and near fades, but the set still manages to build up a decent head of steam, particularly in the final stretch anchored by Active Minds' phenomenal "Hobson's Choice," a monstrously groovy slice of 2-step soul. But two of the strongest (and longest) moments here come courtesy of Four Tet himself: dappled, bonus-like closer "Locked," which would have fit right in on his last album; and "Pyramid," which lashes an intoxicating matrix of vocal samples (actually a vastly pitched-down, sped-up Jennifer Lopez) to a foundation of deep, fluid, Villalobosian microhouse.

The Field: Looping State of Mind review

Axel Willner brought this all on himself. The Swedish loopster's early singles and 2007 debut were so ineffably – not to put too fine a point on it – Sublime: where does he Go from there? Commendably enough, his answer hasn't been toward simple recursion (much as he adores it) but expansion: album two tinkeringly broadened his original approach, and the inanely literalistic Looping State of Mind magnifies that trend, offering seven mutations (transformations, perversions, degradations) of his trademark sound, in (for instance) a newly expansive array of tempos – though, interestingly, nothing quite as quick as his consistently zippy early work. So: "Is This Power" feels like a Sublime track pitched down and smeared, to somewhat nauseous effect; the misnamed "Arpeggiated Love" glides along harmlessly, while "Sweet Slow Baby" is utterly numbing. Yeah, there's more going on: more live instrumentation (the limber, funky "It's Up There"; the warmly hypnotic, fully immersive title track), more vocals drifting in and out of the mix (druggy and dripping on the placid, torpid "Then It's White"; distorted and blank – à la Matthew Dear's recent seediness – on the murky "Burned Out.") It's all so much gum in the works; mussing Willner's pearly ultra-glide smoothness for the sake of some vague, psychedelic interest-added – and yet, mostly, the feeling remains.

Class Actress: Rapprocher review

The "actress" in question would be ex-folkie (and "former drama major") Elizabeth Harper, who indeed seems to have some class; her voice projects both hi-gloss glamour and a personable, almost-casual geniality, a slightly paradoxic conjunction mirrored by the balance of sheeny synthetic elegance and homespun imperfection in Mark Richardson's electro-purist productions. That vaguely amateurish analog wobbliness – the result of a dogmatically anti-MIDI M.O. and/or steadfast fealty to the standard slate of '80s synthpop forebears (it's chickens and eggs, really) – gives full-length bow Rapprocher an impressive period authenticity, sometimes at the risk of dulling its melodic hooks (already of variable sharpness) and muddying its dancefloor potential. Especially in today's digital context, the album feels torn between big-P Pop à la La Roux, or happy-mode Goldfrapp (or at least Annie c. 2004) and the darkier, broodier likes of Ladyton; between the euphoric, frontloaded Vince Clarke-isms of "Weekend" and "Keep You" and the draggy, druggy back end. (Tellingly, they've shared stages with both Little Boots and Washed Out.) It feels like a while since indiedom's given us such a pure, resolutely classicist synth-pop act. Even if, vision-wise, Actress don't hold a classy candle to class-of-'11 counterparts Austra, it's still good to hear electromusic as made by fallible humans.

K-S.H.E.: Routes Not Roots review

Routes Not Roots is the debut album from Kami-Sakunobe House Explosion aka K-S.H.E., one in a lengthy string of monikers adopted by Midwest-bred, Tokyo-based transgendered thinker/scholar/DJ/producer Terre Thaemlitz. Initially released in Japan in 2006 on Thaemlitz's private Comatonse label, and made more widely available through a 2011 reissue, it serves as something of a companion piece to Midtown 120 Blues, Thaemlitz's acclaimed 2008 album as DJ Sprinkles, offering a similar mixture of trenchant (if sometimes oblique) social critique and sterling, smooth deep house grooves. (Both albums also share a recurring train motif.) As Midtown 120 Blues made explicit, Thaemlitz is interested in exposing and investigating the frequently obscured and erased history of house music's development -- specifically, its roots in queer, black, urban subcultures -- through the medium of house music itself, but as this album's title points up, he's less concerned with origin stories per se than with contexts and journeys, and the intermingling cultural, social, political, and economic factors that resonate within those stories. And it's quite some intermingling he's got here. The album's adventures in identity politics range from an interview with Japanese "hermaphrodite" Saki-Chan, set amid absurdly lush harp runs and recorder beeps, to "Stand Up"'s harrowing spoken account of tranny-on-tranny violence (involving a gang of "flaming" Puerto Rican queens), delivered against a pointedly callous, canned laugh track. But these interstitial curiosities (which also include, for no readily apparent reason, a solemn synthesized rendition of folk standard "Black Is the Color of My True Love's Hair") merely form the backdrop for the real meat of the album: five extended house workouts, ranging from seven to fourteen minutes, which operate on multiple musical and textual levels. Expansively bleak opener "Down Home Kami-Sakunobe" gets the multi-cultural stew simmering, dressing up its deep, mournful post-disco grooves with incongruous (but emotionally kindred) country-style fiddling and intermittent, discordant piano clusters. The similarly constructed locomotive shuffle, "Hobo-Train," eventually reveals the source of its seemingly club-minded driving utterance ("work, sisters!") to be a rabble-rousing sermon about unemployment (sampled, oddly enough, from an episode of "Good Times"), while the taut, propulsive "B2B" lets the insinuations of its numbingly incessant refrain ("brother to brother, brother to brother") speak for themselves, or, perhaps, in conversation with the openly gay African-American voices heard on the Stevie Wonder-sampling "Crosstown." Perhaps most effective, both as commentary and dance music, is the uncharacteristically cheerful, buoyant "Infected," which takes on HIV drug trials by way of frothy filter-disco and corny sampled dialogue. Clearly there's a lot to take in here, but Roots' wide-flung, omnivorous approach is seemingly a crucial part of its socio-political purpose. Alternately, with a few sore thumbs excised, it works equally well as a collection of mellow, moody, late-night groovers.

Motor City Drum Ensemble: DJ-Kicks review

For the 36th edition of their venerable DJ Kicks series, K7 Records tapped producer/DJ Danilo Plessow, alias Motor City Drum Ensemble, an individual who hails not from Detroit but from the German automotive center of Stuttgart (home to Mercedes and Porsche). Though his fondness for the manifold classic grooves of America's Motown is amply evident in his own productions and remixes -- including, notably, the jazzy, funky Moodymann-indebted house workouts of his Raw Cuts series -- that's hardly the extent of his inspirations, as this mix makes clear. Indeed, Plessow's brought together a dizzying array of tracks in nearly as many different styles: after an opening invocation from Sun Ra, he leads us on a freewheeling trip through soul (New Zealand's Electric Wire Hustle, via an irresistibly slinky Scratch 22 remix), dub (Rhythm & Sound), Afro-beat (Tony Allen, Geraldo Pino), classic Chicago acid trax (Mr. Fingers), and Detroit techno (Robert Hood), deep house (Fred P.), funky disco (a Walter Gibbons mix of Arts & Crafts' "I've Been Searching"), jazz (Timo Lassy), film music (Philippe Sarde's chugging "Le Cortège et Course"), and even an unexpectedly funky, early Aphex Twin "ambient" work. Of course, genre names are just so many words, and these cuts all basically have more in common than they do differentiating them: shared roots in African-American musical vernacular, of course, for one thing, but above all, in a word: groove. As you might imagine, Plessow simply finds that shared groove (at least, he makes it sound simple) and runs with it, keeping his transitions fluid, clean, and remarkably smooth. Actually, if there's a complaint to be lodged here it's that the mix is a little too seamless: too few tracks really manage to stick out above the generally high-quality, head-nodding flow, especially after about 20 minutes when things really start to simmer. In fact, perhaps the most startling, ear-catching moment here -- the acid-squelch synth that unexpectedly burbles up in Isolée's monstrously funky mix of Recloose's "Cardiology" -- turns out to belong to the original track. In keeping with DJ Kicks tradition, MCDE also contribute a bespoke new production, "L.O.V.E.," a no-nonsense funky strutter that effectively distills the essence of the entire affair, minimal and a bit murky, but still grittily satisfying. Perhaps most readily comparable to Henrik Schwarz's 2006 installment in the series (though it doesn't quite reach that mix's level of soulful spirituality, focusing more exclusively on groove and moody ambience), Plessow clinches yet another feather in K7's towering cap: one that's smartly assembled, artfully sequenced, impeccably tasteful, and indelibly tasty.

DJ Diamond: Flight Muzik review

The first widely released album from 24-year-old Chicago footwork veteran DJ Diamond -- he's been producing since the age of 13 -- is the fourth full-length installment in Planet Mu's seemingly almost single-handed campaign to bring the music of the Windy City's quick-stepping juke and footwork scenes to a wider audience following 2010 albums by DJ Nate and DJ Roc, and the first Bangs & Works compilation. While Flight Muzik essentially adheres to the hallmarks of genre's instantly recognizable formula -- hyperactive, minutely sliced samples repeated incessantly, almost numbingly, against manically jittery rhythms, to dizzying and disorienting entrancing effect. Diamond's productions stand somewhat apart from those of his peers as sonically richer and fuller, less aggressive (if still decidedly tough, at least in rhythmic terms) and generally more varied. He's at least as likely to employ thick, nauseous synths as thuggish hip-hop-style vocal clips (à la the brief "Down Bitch") -- plenty of these tracks feature both -- and regularly works in snippets of jazz and soul ("Snare Fanfare"; the majestic Willie Hutch-flipping closer "I Choose You"), bursts of discordant brass or orchestral bombast ("Burn Dat Boy"; the Santogold-sampling "Go Hard"), and plenty of stranger, less identifiable sounds. Even the percussion here (often more nuanced and abstract than in much footwork) leans heavily toward the treble end of the spectrum. The result, especially in the texturally lusher tracks toward the beginning of the album, is to heighten the hypnotic, perversely lulling effect of the repetition in a way that feels slightly warmer and woozier than the genre's typically ferocious non-stop bluster. Which isn't to suggest that Diamond is a big softie. Just take the menacingly sparse, gutterball fuzz-bass of "Torture Rack," with its unpredictable and unnerving array of percussive sounds, or the cinematically epic, constantly shape-shifting album highlight "Decoded," which combines snaky, insistent, Eastern-tinged video game synths, over-the-top metallic guitar, and probably the album's fiercest low-end beat drubbing. If Flight Muzik is perhaps less direct and immediate than DJ Roc's awesomely hard-hitting The Crack Capone -- and possibly, at least in spots, less overtly dancefloor-minded -- it's probably a good deal more appealing to actually listen to, and more broadly accessible, emphasizing footwork's commonalities with the likes of dubstep, glitch, techno, and grime. Fans of those genres, or anyone interested in truly radical, cutting-edge dance music, will find this well worth checking out.

Bullion: You Drive Me To Plastic review

Bullion is West London sample-slinger Nathan Jenkins, who first turned heads with 2007's Beach Boys/J Dilla-blending Pet Sounds: In the Key of Dee, a rare instance of an album-length mash-up project that more than rewarded its blatantly gimmicky premise. Since then, he's issued a couple of tantalizing singles and one EP; You Drive Me to Plastic is his debut for Young Turks (SBTRKT, El Guincho, Holy Fuck) and at least on some level, his first "proper" release. It's essentially presented as an album, although at nine quick cuts in a maddeningly brief 20 minutes, it hovers in a grey zone between LP and EP. That's appropriate enough, since the Plastic also resists classification on just about every level: there may be aspects of disco, funk, hip-hop, acid jazz, old-school electro, chillout, and cosmic psychedelia (and more: bluegrass fiddles? flamenco guitar? tribal chanting? whinnying horses?) all present and accounted for, but it still feels erroneous to describe this music in terms of genre at all, beyond the broad umbrella category of "sample-based music." Despite his omnivorous, unabashedly maximalist approach -- and although he sometimes resembles a more soulful, less spastic Jason Forrest -- Bullion's musical aesthetic has less to do with the past decade or so of ADD-addled, digital mash-up mischief than with pioneers like Coldcut, Steinski, and, in particular, the Avalanches. Similar to their still-unparalleled Since I Left You, probably Plastic's closest point of reference, this is effectively one single piece of music; a fluid, constantly fluctuating kaleidoscopic suite that meanders from sound to sound and groove to groove with enviable smoothness. Each cut remains distinct -- "Magic Was Ruler" and "Pressure to Dance," for instance, stand out as the obvious dancefloor-primed pleasers -- but the whole is much more than than the sum of its countless, unpredictable, intricately interwoven parts. Impeccably seamless, surprisingly listener-friendly (as dense and volatile as it is, it never feels truly overwhelming), You Drive Me to Plastic is above all playful, inventive and fun.

Modeselektor: Monkeytown review

About a decade and a half into their career, and four busy years since the maximalist pleasure-seeking of 2007's Happy Birthday!, the Berlin-based knob-twiddlers of Modeselektor return, ditching Bpitch Control for their own Monkeytown label to release their third proper full-length, which shares the appropriately simian name of said imprint. As that title suggests, Gernot Bronsert and Sebastian Szary have not abandoned their characteristic, merrily deviant ways: monkeying with the staid conventions of German techno, muddling the lines of genre and good taste, and enlisting a motley assortment of co-conspirators to assist them in these deeds. As with earlier efforts, Monkeytown filches fitfully from glitch, techno, IDM, hip-hop, rave, bass music, and (more prominently here) dreamy, textural electro-pop, often seemingly sequenced for maximum disorientation. Take the four-song run that opens the album: the genial, gently twitchy ambient-crunk of "Blue Clouds"; the all-out bloop-rap cartoonery of "Pretentious Friends" (which gives the always entertaining Busdriver -- filling a role frequently assumed by TTC -- a chance to poke hilariously absurdist fun at snooty high-society trend-chasers, while Modeselektor warp and tweak his vocals just as mercilessly); the fluttery, floating Thom Yorke feature "Shipwreck" (offering enough warmly woozy, stuttered somnolence to pass for a King of Limbs castoff); and the nutty, glitched-out darkwave bass throb of "Evil Twin," bolstered by Otto Von Schirach's leering house-style pronouncements. While the diversity of this sequence might suggest that these cuts derive most of their meat and personality from their respective guest vocalists, the truth is that Modeselektor's colorful, chameleonic, and detail-oriented productions are just as crucial to their improbably wide-ranging effectiveness. That said, Monkeytown is definitely at its least distinctive when Bronsert and Szary are left to their own devices: "German Clap"'s popcorn lurch and "Grillwalker"'s crispy squelch-hop, while flavorful enough, amount to little more than rote palate-cleansers. Meanwhile, fans of past albums' manic, party-ready energy may be dismayed to find that, even counting the nodding, plushly soulful tech-funk of "Berlin" at the midpoint, there's nothing overtly danceable in the album's back half, even though it does feature some of the finest moments here: a second, more fully formed (and fragment-flecked) Yorke collaboration, "This," and the even lovelier "Green Light Go," which blends whirring, wordless vocals and tastefully busy live drumming with an earnest, melodic pop core (courtesy of post-rockers PVT). The very notion of "maturity" might seem like anathema to Modeselektor, but these two tunes, in particular, suggest that the M-word might not be such a dire prospect after all (not that they're quite there yet). And while nobody expects cohesiveness from these guys, Monkeytown is at least commendably concise -- their leanest and tightest offering yet.

Pictureplane: Thee Physical review

Thee Physical, the second widely-distributed album from Denver-based producer Pictureplane, is a dirty, murky, delirious mess. There's a lot going on here, and it all tends to happen at the same time. Take the first few seconds of album opener "Body Mod": brightly chintzy house piano stabs in a faltering rhythmic loop; a crudely cut-and-pasted, instantly recognizable hip-hop vocal snippet (the same sample that powered Fatboy Slim's block-rockin' 1998 remix of Wildchild's "Renegade Master"); some churning, fuzz-toned synth throbs; a pinging Nintendo bassline; a distant, warped, diva-esque wail. All this hangs in vague, uneasy suspension for half a minute; then come the manic rushing snares, jump-starting a syncopated, jacking breakbeat that suddenly harnesses everything into a tight lockgroove, making the next three-plus minutes feel as propulsive and inevitable as they are disorienting. It's a striking, effective collage and – better – a bluntly obvious dancefloor killer. It's also, by some distance, the most immediate thing here, though not necessarily a misleading introduction.
Like just about everybody making electronic music at this point, Pictureplane's Travis Egedy is an unabashed nostalgiast: every element of "Body Mod," like the rest of Thee Physical, hearkens more or less explicitly to the popular dance music of the 1990s – diva house, Hi-NRG, hip-house, rave, big beat, drum'n'bass, two-step garage – not coincidentally the last time, until recently, that electronica had anything to do with this country's cultural mainstream. But he's not, by any means, a revivalist, at least in any straightforward sense. Besides slap-chopping all of these styles together in an ecstatically sloppy, anti-formalist jumble, just about every sound that passes through Egedy's decks comes out grimy, roughed up and sonically distressed, hearkening to the same impulses fueling the amorphous chillwave movement. Adding to the general sense of woozy bewilderment and stylistic abstraction, most of these grooves are surprisingly slow – closer to dubstep than disco, tempo-wise – rendering them less oddly danceable than they feel like they should be, though allowing for some thrilling double-time freakout moments. Throw in occasional bouts of wobbly, manifestly non-mechanical imprecision – like the just-slightly-off bass breakdown midway through "Black Nails" – and a certain political/critical subtext starts to emerge. If all electronic music functions, on some level, as a mediation of the endlessly mutable relationship between human and machine, the thrust here seems to be "retain the throbbing, emotive heart of '90s club music, while utterly fraying and distorting its vapid, faceless façade."
For all the mileage Egedy gets from this premise, though, Physical's best moment is also its most conformist, at least structurally. "Real is a Feeling," named for Egedy's ongoing Denver DJ night, reins in the chaos for a blissful outpouring of grubbily shimmering synth-pop; the album's sole, shining club anthem. Elsewhere, for better and worse, this album often can't quite decide if it wants to be music for the mind or the body. On the other hand, if "we are all post physical" – as Egedy intones, breathily, amidst typically dark, sweaty electronic churn – then perhaps it shouldn't matter anyway.

Memory Tapes: Player Piano review

For the product of a self-described socially awkward homebody, Memory Tapes' 2009 debut album, Seek Magic, sounded remarkably expansive and exploratory, bubbling its way through seemingly limitless sonic tangents and stylistic intersections to forge something at once fresh-feeling and immensely nostalgic. Like its predecessor, Player Piano was created in Dayve Hawk's New Jersey home studio, and it plows a similar if somewhat narrower musical swath: dreamy, texture-heavy electronic indie pop, dripping with reverb and lousy with synthesizers, commingled with elements of dance, rock, and new age that are in this case considerably toned down, if still discernible. This time, though, the visceral effect of the music more closely matches the insularity of its origins; these tracks feel simpler, smaller in scope, less adventurous, and more inward-focused. Having nailed a sprawling but undeniably evocative sound the first time out, Hawk's evident focus here is on the songs themselves: save for a few relatively brief instrumentals, his vocals are notably more prominent than ever before. "Sunhits" is the most blatant of the album's big pop stabs, with its clean, sheeny new wave guitar hook, midtempo New Order synth beat, and warmly harmonized refrain full of caustically double-edged positivity ("life is a dream if we never wake up..."). "Worries" and "Today Is Our Life" are equally vibrant in spots, though both tend to lose focus and momentum beyond their choruses (the latter in particular can't seem to stay in one genre for more than a minute, squeezing in a razor-sharp, out-of-nowhere guitar solo and a church organ/sitar breakdown along the way). While these aural color bursts are at least decently interesting (unlike, say, the drab, plodding "Yes I Know" or the rote-feeling "Offers"), few of them make for particularly great pop songs, whether that's due to overly distracting arrangements, Hawk's thin, lackluster singing (which is often distorted through layering and textural manipulation, but in any case typically the least compelling sound here), or the nagging similarity of many of his melodies. (The sparsely folky "Fell Thru Ice" is appealing but slight, leaving the genial, sweetly patient "Wait in the Dark" as perhaps the best of the lot.) Player Piano offers enough of Hawk's characteristically inventive sonic tinkering -- including, the title notwithstanding, an intriguing emphasis on organ sounds -- to merit repeated listens, even if these productions do sound worrisomely flat at times. But juxtaposed with the singular alchemy he achieved on Memory Tapes' debut, it's hard not to hope Hawk focuses his energies a little differently next time out.

Philadelphia City Paper reviews:

Chrissy Murderbot: Women's Studies review

Genre-trawling stunt-blogging DJ (check the awesome yearofmixtapes.blogspot.com) turned puckishly polyglot dance producer, Chicagoan Chrissy Murderbot flips maybe the year's most breathlessly giddy party record with his Planet Mu debut. Fitfully grounded in the manic stutters and off-the-chart BPMs of his adopted hometown's footwork and juke scenes, but borrowing just as liberally from dancehall, ragga jungle and rave, Women's Studies pairs cartoonishly crude humor – "Heavy Butt" comes complete with "we're here to explore Uranus" sample – and populist hands-in-the-air anthemism with dizzyingly refined beat-fusing prowess, to thoroughly deliriously effect.

Pallers: Sea of Memories review

He's given us one minor masterpiece already this year (Acid House Kings' strummy, sunny Music Sounds Better With You) but that's hardly stopped insatiable Swedish popsmith Johan Angergård (Club 8, The Legends) from gearing his shy, whispery croon right back up and teaming with longtime pal Henrik Mårtensson for The Sea of Memories (Labrador), their full-length bow as Pallers and a swirling, sterling set of atmospheric, autumnal electro-pop brimming with elegance and muted melancholy but also boasting, in the female-sung "Wicked," at least one club-ready dark-disco anthem-to-be.

Rustie: Glass Swords review

In an improbably overcrowded UK "bass music" field, Glaswegian producer Rustie manages to stake out a defiantly singular identity on Glass Swords, his exuberantly over-the-top Warp debut, marrying the label's archetypal "intelligence" and chin-stroker-friendly compositional density with poptastic hypercolor euphoria and a zany, go-for-baroque aesthetic embracing all things bright and booty-full: fruity robo-funk, digital headsnap hip-hop, pixelated videogame sunbursts, cartoon slap bass, chipmunk vocal splices, proggish polyrhythms, glowstick trance. Oh yeah, there's even some dubstep in there.

M+A: things.yes review

M + A is Michele Ducci and Alessondro Degli Angioli, two Italian twenty-year-olds whose things.yes (Monotreme), feels less like a debut album than a magical mechanical music-box, stuffed with surprises, curiosities, sunny clutter and uncloying cuteness. It's a funny, beguiling little record that's tough to place in a contemporary context (distant cousins to Bibio, or perhaps a quieter, gentler take on Rustie's giddy every-genre maximalism?) but would've made perfect sense a decade ago, sandwiched somewhere between the tunefully glitchy IDM of Plaid and Plone and the so-called lap-pop of the long-lost Notwist and Lali Puna.

Mungolian Jet Set: Schlungs review

There are your humdrum, workaday cosmic disco epics, and then there are your mega mutant bongos'n'lazers boogiethons about being abducted by actual space alien disco freakazoids, which is pretty much how it feels to listen to Mungolian Jet Set, a couple Norwegian knuckleheads with some seriously screwy musical superpowers. Schlungs (Smalltown Supersound), their third debut album in a row (see?), boasts their tightest, most comprehensible compositions yet, but it's best when their penchant for deliriously proggy absurdist kitsch excess is left fully unfettered.

Basement Jaxx: Vs. Metropole Orkest review

Basement Jaxx Vs. Metropole Orkest (Atlantic Jaxx) – wherein a seventy-strong Dutch symphony takes on the UK maximalist-house duo's catalog (plus bespoke offerings like "Mozart's Tea Party," which sounds precisely how you'd imagine) – is basically ludicrous in both concept and ultra-bombastic execution. In other words: roughly par for the Jaxxian course, but surprisingly fun even by that token, especially when spotlighting the group's forays into Samba, Balkan, swing jazz and Middle Eastern music. Who knew "Where's Your Head At?" could benefit from a good harpsichord solo?

Sepalcure: Sepalcure review

Much like last year's quietly enchanting debut by their Hotflush labelmates Mount Kimbie (and, to a lesser extent, that of Gold Panda), the eponymous bow from Brooklyn post-dubstep duo Sepalcure – polymathic beat luminaries Praveen Sharma (aka Braille) and Travis Stewart (aka Machinedrum) – filters the diffuse diaspora of UK-bass micro-genres into a focused, delicately detailed set of gently fluid, pointillistic grooves, frayed vocal fragments, and warmly woozy atmospheres, whose slightly faceless air of politeness and familiarity hardly diminishes its ample, unassuming charms.

Elite Gymnastics: Ruin review

Minnesota-by-way-of-Tumblr duo Elite Gymnastics – rare Stateside inhabitants of that fertile breeding-ground of Balearic dance beats and indie-pop sweetness (plus a healthy dollop of new age kitsch) pioneered by St. Etienne and lately colonized by Swedes like Air France (both bands are seemingly referenced in the title of their "Minneapolis Belongs to You") – get viscerally physical on Ruin (Acephale), which consolidates a pair of web-issued mirror-image EPs; one side's glitzy, jungle-tinged breakbeats sanded down and repurposed for side two's lumberous, mood-enhancing slow jams.

SBTRKT: SBTRKT review

The South London-based SBTRKT isn't quite as reductionistic in his approach to production as he is about spelling, but his eponymous first LP (Young Turks) is frankly straightforward, even workmanlike, in its pursuit of palatable yet fully contemporary electronic pop. Enlisting a bevy of future-soul vocalists, and drawing more on two-step and smooth R&B than dubstep's jaggeder edge, this set is friendlier (and livelier) than James Blake but just as gently majestic, even if its coloring stays mainly within the lines.

Zomby: Dedication review

Zomby's somber, suitelike 4AD debut finds the inscrutable dubstepper squeezing sixteen fleeting tracks into thirty-five minutes riddled with frustratingly premature fades and abrupt breaks. He makes the seconds count though: Dedication (named in tribute to his deceased father) offers enough evocation and invention; pathos and dread – bleary 8-bit bleeps, burnt-out riddims, spectral alien ambience – that it could have been just as satisfying and intriguing at twice this length.

Washed Out: Within and Without review

Arriving, in suitably leisurely fashion, two years after the much-buzzed "summer of chillwave" he was instrumental in touching off, Ernest Greene's luxuriantly lush full-length debut as Washed Out comes across as resolutely classicist (or, said otherwise, impeccably generic); delivering all the requisite fluttery warmth and thrumming daydream grooves, slightly shellacked of their wobbly analog charm. It's not that Within and Without (Sub Pop) is boring – at least, not in a bad way – but there's such a thing as being too well washed.

AMG review round-up, volume XXII: 2010 third quarter, -ish

gotta wrap it up. here's a bunch of records, mostly from july-september 2010 (with a few secret stragglers, including some a year or two late), roughly in order of what they're like and how much i like them.

Allo Darlin': Allo Darlin' review

Allo Darlin' are a quintessential, dyed-in-the-wool twee pop band (and a pedigreed one at that – frontwoman Elizabeth Morris plays in Tender Trap with twee icon Amelia Fletcher, while bassist Bill Botting is a member of Darren Hayman's Secondary Modern) but their potential appeal extends far beyond the typically homespun, insider-y indie pop scene, since their music conveys all the genre's sweetness and enthusiasm without (or at least without too much of) the sappy infantilism and amateurish shambling that turn off most listeners of the genre. On the basis of their self-titled 2010 debut, it's not hard to imagine this London outfit finding the kind of widespread devotion enjoyed by leading lights like Camera Obscura, the Lucksmiths, or even Belle & Sebastian. Certainly, Allo Darlin' is most reminiscent of these artists' earlier, scrappier efforts, but the sophistication is there, most crucially, in Morris' songs, which strike just the right balance of clever and heartfelt, wittily specific, and broadly relatable. And, without exception, magnificently tuneful. Vocally, she's got all the charm of, say, Camera Obscura's Tracyanne Campbell, but with a much more upbeat, outgoing personality (and her Aussie-via-London accent – even just her pronunciation of the word "telephone" – is worth melting for). The band never stray far from the Platonic template of crisp, vibrantly produced '60s-style guitar pop, with tinges of soul, country, and Afro-pop, generous use of ukulele and lap steel, and a healthy sprinkling of ba-bas and sha-la-las. The playing is consistently strong and, with a few tender-hearted exceptions, briskly bouncy and grooving – particularly apt for the first three songs, which are about going out dancing (though they're also about heavenly embraces, Polaroid photographs, and youthful cash deficiency, respectively.) Other pivotal topics covered include falling in love (in an amusement park; whilst making chili) and listening (and making references) to pop music. In the time-honored tradition of the Pooh Sticks, Morris fills her songs with canny cultural nods: lifting lines from Weezer, quoting Johnny Cash and Doris Day, citing fellow twees the Just Joans. (Meanwhile "Woody Allen" – which switches to film references for a change – is melodically reminiscent of the Magnetic Fields' "Strange Powers," while the blissfully lovely "Let's Go Swimming" lyrically echoes their "All the Umbrellas in London.") Maybe best of all, "My Heart Is a Drummer" reps for Paul Simon's Graceland: "we know it's everybody's favorite/deep down in the place where music makes you happiest." Clearly, that's a place that Morris and Allo Darlin' know extremely well.

The Books: The Way Out review

"Welcome to a new beginning" declares a voice at the start of The Way Out, and this album does indeed mark a fresh new chapter for the Books: a return to record-making five years after the fantastic Lost and Safe, on a new label, with a newly open-ended, wide-ranging approach to their work. It may not initially sound that way: opener "Group Autogenics I," one of several pieces that draw on guided meditation-style self-help recordings, feels almost like Books-by-numbers, with a gently humorous, disorienting oddness, juxtaposed with genuinely deeply relaxing sonics, that will be immediately familiar to fans of their past albums. After that, though, the duo stretches beyond its comfort zone in multiple directions at once, pushing at the boundaries of an already utterly singular style. The acoustic strings (primarily guitar and cello) that dominated their earlier output are still present, but they share space with a dizzying array of instrumental and quasi-instrumental sounds, from twinkling music boxes to a full-scale sample-generated orchestra of archaic brass and woodwinds. And while scavenged spoken word samples remain the most defining element of the Books' music, anchoring each of these cuts save for the four sung, lyric-based "proper songs" (including the gloriously geeky, math-worshiping chorale "Beautiful People," which announces, slightly disingenuously: "We genuflect before pure abstraction"), they're less concerned with constructing linguistic puzzles out of their samples here – cleverly editing them to evince a sublimely witty illogic and absurdity – than with exploring their emotional nuances and often surreal humanity. Most tracks focus on a small number of voices, creating a sense of context and resonance without necessarily allowing for full comprehension. Hence, we get a tentative, intimate series of answering machine messages; a nonsensical bedtime tale about a Peter Rabbit-like character named Hip Hop; an inexplicably prickly grammarian vehemently insisting that "I Am Who I Am." "A Cold Freezin' Night" is a hilarious, slightly chilling tour de force built around a battle of (increasingly violent) words between a young brother and sister, set to a thumping disco beat. "I Didn't Know That" is even more striking musically – the closest thing yet to a Books pop hit, and definitely the funkiest they've ever been, recalling Squarepusher's nimble bass playing and Akufen's micro-sampled funk barrages. The stated intention for The Way Out was for each track to be "its own rabbit hole," and the album does indeed manage to survey an impressively disparate set of worlds and modes. Still, each one remains readily recognizable as belonging to the Books' own unique, unequivocal universe, which, happily, seems to be expanding at least twice as rapidly as our own.

ceo: White Magic review

ceo is Eric Berglund, one half of the Tough Alliance and co-CEO of Gothenburg's Sincerely Yours label; his first solo venture is another clear winner from that inscrutable but highly dependable camp. While its brightly colorful melting pot of indie pop, ersatz tropicalia, chintzy new age, and electronic dance-pop doesn't stray far from the distinctive, neon-hued sound of TTA, White Magic feels tighter, lusher, and more polished (especially vocally) than most of the duo's output, with an earnest, romantic emotional outlook far from TTA's typically enigmatic, performative sneering. Berglund wastes no time announcing his ambitions here, starting with the swaying orchestral expanse of "All Around," over which he declares: "I'm coming home to face the demons on my own." It's a grand opening statement, but it's only one part of the ceo equation: alongside weightier material like the ruminative "Oh God Oh Dear" and a solemn, churchy rendition of "Den Blomstertid Nu Kommer" (a hymnlike ode to summertime that's traditionally sung at the close of the Swedish school year) that ends the album with the same string figures that opened it, the balance of White Magic's eight tracks consists of cheerfully melodic dance-pop. "Illuminata" and "Love and Do What You Will," in particular, are about as buoyant as they come, and "Come with Me" is widescreen Balearic pop at its glistening, tuneful best. The title track shades slightly darker, with its vaguely sinister, pulsing tribal techno punctuated by jungle noises, steely guitar flourishes, and percolating pan flutes, while TTA's recurrent hip-hop-inflected fascination with violence rears its head on the otherwise blithe-sounding "No Mercy" with an excellently deployed knife-sharpening sample (the song also features offhand lyrical references to bondage, incarceration, and smoking crack). Without shortchanging Berglund's melodic abilities and his knack for sharp, effective mood juxtapositions, ceo's greatest attribute is his fearlessly inventive, highly detailed approach to arrangement, bringing together an unpredictable assortment of sounds on nearly every track, and somehow making these largely synthetic productions feel dynamic and vibrantly alive. Phil Spector and Brian Wilson come to mind – the baroque strings and clip-clop percussion of "Oh God Oh Dear," specifically, suggest discreet nods to each – and, indeed, pace Wilson, the whole affair might be aptly summed up as a "quarter-life symphony to God." At under 30 minutes, White Magic could feel painfully brief, but it's so dense with creativity, melody, and life that it seems churlish to want more.

Clubfeet: Gold on Gold review

At first blush, Clubfeet seem like yet another of the countless faceless bands plying the intersection of rock, pop, dance, and electronic music in the early 2010s, but this Capetown-via-Melbourne trio is slightly more of a puzzle than its "sounds like" list suggests. For one thing, despite the band's floor-friendly moniker and appearance on the dance-oriented Plant label – and despite its sleek, synthy sheen and plethora of electronic beats – Gold on Gold feels too restrained and contemplative to really come off as a dance album. You could probably dance to most of these tracks if you had to, but on the whole it's more of a mood-setter than a floor-filler, recalling fellow Melburnians Cut Copy at their less vigorous (but still lushly anthemic), suggesting a sprightlier, fleshier take on the xx's darkly stylish veneer and updating the epic romanticism of early U2 (specifically their guitar textures) and early Stars. For a band so centrally concerned with tone and texture, Clubfeet's most impressive feat here – and what sets them apart from many of their contemporaries – is the amount of personality they're able to convey while maintaining a consistent dominant mood. It operates in subtle ways – never overbearing, nearly genteel – but their distinctive charm is nevertheless apparent throughout, often in the touches of humor and lightness they bring to what's largely a sober-minded affair: an oddly chipper tropical beatbox undercutting the lavish melancholy of "Fall from Up Here," a sweet, simple piano figure running through the achingly languorous "Six Days," or the spoken word group chants in both "Teenage Suicide (Don't Do It)" (which, Heathers-referencing aside, seems essentially straight-faced about its titular subject, making for a noble message of perhaps dubious utility in a dance-pop song) and "D.I.E. Yuppie Scum" (which, contrarily, is pretty plainly a gag). The latter two songs are the album's most immediate, attention-getting standouts and most likely dance jams, mostly by virtue of those chanted hooks, but ultimately neither one measures up to "Count Your Lovers," which gets by on pure melody and prettiness. Another highlight is a candy-sweet synth pop rendition of James' "Say Something" which, in addition to being a well-chosen and beautifully executed cover, is one of few moments where Clubfeet set aside their guitars entirely, meaning that perhaps the most electronic thing on the album is a version of a rock song. Who needs pigeonholes anyway?

Dragonette: Fixin' To Thrill review

It's telling that Dragonette titled their second album Fixin to Thrill, and not just straight-up Thrillin', even if it absolutely makes good on that stated intention. Notwithstanding the band's uber-stylish panache and the dangerously glitzy, fabulously sordid rock & roll lifestyle their music projects, there's no denying that the frequently fantastic fun and giddy thrills to be found here are the upshot of some serious craftsmanship. Dragonette are, above all, pop perfectionists, carefully culling all the shiniest bits from '80s new wave (from Duran Duran to the Go-Go's), '90s alt pop (they bear a passing resemblance to No Doubt, a more striking one to the sweet 'n' dirty electro-rock crunch of Garbage), and full-throttle '00s teen pop to concoct an obviously familiar but still effortlessly modern sound to match their punky-spunky energy. But that wouldn't count for much if not for the earworm-y melodies this album boasts in spades, with almost every cut packed full of naggingly catchy synth riffs, vocal hooks, and guitar lines. Fixin may lack a clear, massive standout to match Galore's "I Get Around" (the title track's a decent attempt, but it falls a bit short) but otherwise it marks a slight but noticeable improvement on the band's already-pretty-great debut, a more consistent batch of songs paced so that the highlights keep on coming. For the most part, the odd-numbered songs tend to be the strongest, including the sinuous, sinister "Liar," the goofy, superhero-themed "We Rule the World," and the irresistibly bouncy "Okay Dolore," quasi-cheerleader pop with enough (synthetic) handclaps to do Toni Basil proud. While the band's tendency for oddball stylistic detours is toned down here next to Galore's unscheduled excursions to Bollywood and Tin Pan Alley, the peppy banjos on "Gone Too Far," the kids choir breakdown on "Stupid Grin," and gentle cabaret stylings of "You're a Disaster" keep that sense of playfulness alive in a somewhat more integrated fashion. But the most striking and promising new development here may be an emotional one. "Easy," by some margin the album's best song, is an unusually tender expression of doomed, devoted love with a slinky, sparsely funky electro groove that drops out partway through for a rare moment of vulnerability from the normally all-sass Martina Sobrara: a sweetly harmonized, awkwardly phrased plea imploring her lover not to play games with her fragile heart. It's a total sucker move coming from these guys, an arresting, affecting moment regardless of whether you hear it as unfettered emotionalism or simply a top-notch example of how true pop greatness is to be found in the small details, a lesson that these crafty popsters have definitely taken to heart.

Copy: bio and Hard Dream review

Though he restricts himself to a palette of retro-sounding synths and straitlaced, reasonably dancefloor-friendly drum programming, never straying too far from the distinctive (if hardly earth-shattering) instrumental techno-pop vibe he's made his signature, Copy (alias Portland beatmaker Marius Libman) still covers considerable ground, emotionally, and stylistically. Hard Dream, Copy's third full-length, is titled after and loosely conceived as a score for an unrealized horror movie concept – for a flick about mysteriously televised nightmares – and, fittingly, it has its share of dark, moody, and menacing passages. But it's got plenty of pep and sweetness too, thanks to Libman's unrepentant tunefulness and full-color approach to composition; his synthesizers, which often manage to sound gleaming and gritty at the same time, are just as likely to sparkle and soar as to burble and brood. At the album's frequent best, he's often got multiple synthetic strands of melody going at once, layered into a dense, satisfying analog stew, as on the eight-minute opener "One Less Time"– a slow-building, slow-motion disco epic which might not quite live up to its Daft Punk-baiting title, but still finds some frothy, intoxicating territory to explore – or the sunnier, rather ornate "Breakfast." Copy also does well in sparser settings – "Real Scared," juxtaposing music box arpeggios and archly Baroque synth leads against a spare, swaggering, hip-hop beat – is a clear standout (and one of a few tracks to blatantly recall sometime-confederates Ratatat), while "Stay Away from It"'s herky-jerky, 8-bit bleep-thrash closes the album on a particularly fun, frenetically chirpy note. Only a few tracks are functionally devoid of melody, and they're the weakest links here: the murky, fairly generic dubstep foray "I Didn't Know" and the jittery, Kraftwerk-ian autopilot chase scene music of "It Could Have Been More" make for fine-enough mood shifters in the context of the album, but mostly they seem like rote genre exercises whose failings can be summed up by the latter's title. Generally, though, Libman's compositional gifts don't steer him wrong, and Hard Dream is much more nuanced and engagingly listenable than its stylistic trappings initially suggest. Deliberately or not, Copy's music tends to come off as primarily party fodder, well-crafted but essentially superficial, trading heavily on novelty and kitschy '80s nostalgia, but it's equally possible to see it in the tradition of thoughtful, palatable electronic "listening music," of the sort once peddled by µ-ziq and Plaid, and lately revived by Copy's West coast peers like Eliot Lipp and Nosaj Thing.

Restless People: bio and Restless People review

Restless people indeed, the members of this Brooklyn foursome cycled through several permutations and projects together – as three-quarters of dance-punk second-stringers Professor Murder; as the neotropical production/remix duo Tanlines – before emerging with this concise but emphatic statement of purpose, which can be seen as a synthesis of all that came before it. Taking Tanlines' lighthearted, percolating electronics as a jumping-off point, Restless People add an equally upbeat, accessible pop/rock songwriting slant, arriving at a very 2010 middle ground between the poppy, globe-trotting indie dance of Delorean, Cut Copy, and El Guincho, and the danceable, globe-trotting indie pop of Vampire Weekend, Foreign Born, and Yeasayer – think of them, perhaps, as Williamsburg's answer to the Very Best. At first blush, the album feels even slicker and poppier than any of the above, bursting out of the gate with the Day-glo synths and air horns of "Days of Our Lives," a glossy, euphoric club cut with a relentless stream of simple, continually recycling vocal hooks. "Constant Panic" is even more insistently kinetic – high-NRG neo-disco with a Caribbean lilt, canned handclaps, chopped vocals, and a couple of well-placed percussion breaks. Even the relative breather "Little Sky," which brings down the pace with a nostalgically poignant lyric ("I was born under a great big sky/Now I look up and see a little sky"), is a gleaming, widescreen synth epic that would've been a sure-fire radio staple were it released 25 years earlier, in the age of Peter Gabriel and "In a Big Country." Even with considerable rhythmic variety – "Don't Back Down" crossbreeds new wave piano pop with hiccuping ska; "Practical Magic" shapeshifts from half-time reggae to a frenetic soca jump-up – Restless People has a tendency toward sonic samey-ness: it might all seem like so much faceless, peppy prettiness if not for Eric Emm's enthusiastically earnest vocals. Though not a conventionally great singer, Emm sounds clear-eyed and charismatic, urging on the crowd with a motivational energy pitched somewhere between dancehall toaster and positive hardcore frontman. His intermittent shouts of "Ay, Restless people! Okay!" comes across as both a rallying cry to his bandmates and a sincere, if slightly lackadaisical, life-affirming call to arms for anyone within earshot. That mostly latent punkish energy comes to the forefront on closer "Victimless Crime," the album's only serious misstep (or at least misfit), whose cheerful mess of synth squiggles and incoherent chanting atop a crunched, chugging groove can hardly keep pace with the streamlined pancultural effervescence that preceded it.

Tanlines: Settings and Volume On reviews

A short list of artists for whom Tanlines have provided remix work – El Guincho, the Tough Alliance, Memory Tapes – gives an almost too-perfect snapshot of the stylistic terrain this Brooklyn duo traverses. Along with their True Panther labelmates Delorean, these acts are at the forefront of a particular late-2000s approach to electronic music that's decidedly poppy and danceable but without the formal rigidity of dance-pop proper, featuring plush, treble-heavy synths, thickly burbling percussion, and warmly layered, tropical-flavored grooves. That's a fairly straight-ahead description of what you can expect to find on Settings, a highly enjoyable release that nevertheless tends to blend into its surroundings (both aurally and stylistically) rather than asserting its individuality. The clearest standouts, or at least the most memorable moments, come with "Real Life" and "Policy of Trust," both enhanced (though not exactly dominated) by Eric Emm's appealingly low-key vocals, which ruminate on life's unknowable roads ("For a minute I was lost/I looked away/My destination was unknown") and make sideways nods to Depeche Mode. The third vocal cut, "Bees," is less melodically engaging, flirting with slightly more aggressive, calypsonian rhythm, while the closing "Z" is a lovely, more electro-leaning showcase for the glassy, wordless vocals of labelmate Glasser. At six songs and 24 minutes, Settings comes off as a reasonably generous EP, not least because it seems like about the limit for what these guys are able to accomplish without in some way broadening the parameters of what they do – any longer and its commendable cohesiveness might start to seem more tiresome. A true full-length effort from these two could be a very appealing prospect; they might just have to vary up their portfolio a bit to pull it off.

Arp: The Soft Wave review

Alexis Georgopoulos' debut as Arp, 2007's In Light, was an almost forbiddingly minimal collection of glacially paced analog synth excursions and sparse, meandering drones. The Soft Wave follows that outing with a set that's equally subdued and nearly as restrained in its compositional approach, yet feels strikingly rich in comparison to the utter starkness of its predecessor. There are a few obvious departures here, including an expanded sonic palette – featuring electric guitars and basses, pianos, beatboxes, and even (on one track) vocals in addition to the expected array of vintage synthesizers (which occasionally veer into patches of fuzz and abstract noise instead of remaining clinically pure) – and the fact that many of these pieces boast what could legitimately called melodies, or at least melodic motifs. But the biggest change is more than anything one of mood: while both albums are calm and contemplative, there's a warmth and restfulness to Wave that was distinctly absent from the sometimes naggingly unsettled, sometimes downright chilly In Light. It's right there in the track list: titles like "Catch Wave," "High Life," and "Summer Girl" evoke a pretty specific vibe, and they're not lying – the latter two in particular offer a hazy tunefulness that makes them, along with the groovily fluid guitar-looping "White Light," the first Arp tracks that could be considered infectious. You're probably unlikely to jam them on your way to the beach, but they're perfect for laying back and dreaming about summer, regardless of the actual outdoor temperature (well, as long as you don't mind the occasional squall). The same is equally true of the lengthier pieces that make up The Soft Wave's two poles: the stately, gently triumphant two-part opener "Pastoral Symphony," which is the closest this album comes to In Light's hermetic analog purity, and the blissfully languid slow-motion bossa "From a Balcony Overlooking the Sea" (the aforementioned vocal number, reminiscent of "rock album" Brian Eno and, curiously, the Sea and Cake), clearly the farthest thing here from Arp's established wheelhouse. Though these two pieces don't sound very much like one another, the feeling they create is surprisingly comparable. Much as Georgopoulos' compositions gradually evolve and mutate out of an initial sense of stasis, he's found a way to vary his approach – if only, in the scheme of things, fairly slightly – that moves it forward, slowly but surely, from simple clarity toward a rare luminescence.

Drivan: bio and Disko review

Norwegian producer Kim Hiorthøy has a knack for cobbling together small scraps of sound and melody in a careful but seemingly arbitrary fashion that can make the simple and familiar seem oddly curious and make the coarse and unexpected feel innocently sweet. Disko, the first output from Drivan – a group consisting of Hiorthøy and three female performance artists who serve here primarily as vocalists and co-architects – is the least overtly electronic recording he has been involved in, although most of its tracks do feature his typically low-key, rough-hewn, hip-hop-styled beats for at least a portion of their running time. For the most part, the album uses the melodic but not particularly song-based linear structures familiar from his solo work. Tracks tend to build from a basic rudimentary riff, melody, or chord progression, typically picked out on acoustic guitar or a slightly out of tune piano, with the vocals – exclusively in Swedish, usually solo or in unison, and tending toward a plain, uninflected tone that sometimes takes on a childlike, singsong cast – layered on top. Beats filter in and out, tracks develop and disintegrate in fluid but unpredictable ways, and Hiorthøy tacks on little bits of incidental noise and sonic detritus: the ambient sounds of talking, laughing, scuffling of papers; spectral, unidentified samples of this and that; whistling and squeaking electronic toys and synthetic strings and cheap-sounding keyboard organ solos. There's one clear standout and centerpiece in the six-minute "Det Gör Ingenting," which is the fullest-sounding and most melodically compelling piece here, its sweetly hypnotic throb suggesting an epic, pulsating dance track as performed by children, or heard from several rooms away through slightly worn-out speakers. (It's the only time the album comes close to the danceability suggested by its devious title, though it's still probably a bit too mellow for that.) Otherwise, it's all gently shambolic, mildly folky, slightly inscrutable, and generally quite likable. One gets the sense that Hiorthøy and his cohorts could easily continue turning out these strange, sweet, and satisfying songs in similar fashion for quite some time, if they so chose, and it would be hard to complain if they did.

K-X-P: K-X-P review

A good deal heavier and murkier than the electronic prog-disco fare sometimes associated with Smalltown Supersound – though far from unrelated to that aesthetic – K-X-P is the first fruit of the eponymous project fronted by Op:l Bastards' Timo Kaukolampi. Effectively a synth-bass-drums power trio – with the slight twist that the lineup alternates between a pair of drummers – K-X-P specialize in dark, elemental, monolithic grooves with an obvious debt to your typical slate of gritty, texture-oriented post-punk minimalists (Suicide, Spacemen 3, This Heat) and motorik Krautrockers (Can, Neu!). Each of these eight cuts has its own distinct rhythmic flavor – "Mehu Moments" sports a simple, steady jazz-funk beat; "Elephant Man" rides a hypnotic, herky-jerky tribal pounding; standout "18 Hours (Of Love)" is a stomping T. Rex/Goldfrapp/Battles shuffle – but they maintain a fairly consistent tone and approach, with plenty of groaning, throbbing drones, noisy squalls of synth noodling, and other bits of psychedelic electro-sonic detritus. Vocals crop up occasionally on three or four of the songs, but they're typically too distorted to make much of an impression – the exception being "Pockets," wherein they're intelligible as English and recognizably melodic though fairly grating (after grappling, largely successfully, with conventional song form, the track's second half retreats into an unexpected morass of fluttering, electro-disco synth arpeggios). As the album progresses, it grows more heavily electronic and increasingly spacy, with the gauzy soundtrack synths of "New World" offering a more subdued moment of cosmic reverie and "Epilogue" closing things out with some beatless, meandering organ drones and wispy wordless vocals. Despite its general seedy overtones and occasional moments of harshness, K-X-P is far from an unpalatable or unpleasant record; indeed, its relentless intensity can even feel oddly calming.

Eddy Current Suppression Ring: Primary Current review

Eddy Current Suppression Ring's second album is essentially of a piece with their self-titled debut, meaning here are ten more blasts of direct, primitive, tuneful punk from the bowels of Melbourne. Rough and scrappy but too giddily enthusiastic to come off as snotty or sneering, ECSR tap in to the primal, fun-loving energy of frill-free rock & roll, a spirit that feels every bit as immediate and relevant as it is familiar and timeless. Their sound may be derivative (of any number of past clatter-masters – perhaps most notably the Stooges, but also Wire, the Fall, the Feelies, and on and on), but it's not formulaic, and certainly not monotonous: Primary Colours employs a fair amount of rhythmic and textural variety within its basic template of straightforward lock-grooves and minimalist guitar shredding. So for every all-out skronkfest like "Sunday's Coming" and "Which Way to Go," which maintain a fairly steady barrage of thick guitar noise, there's a sleeker, spindlier cut like "Memory Lane" or the bored anti-media rant "Colour Television" ("Another Wheel of Fortune/Another million tortured") to keep their squalls in check for just the right moment of release. Punk love song "Wrapped Up" is bouncy and infectious with a strong, slinky riff, the Feelies-esque instrumental "That's Inside of Me" finds a herky-jerky funk groove, and "We'll Be Turned On" loosens up even further with some sloppy organ pounding and a righteously bashed-out rhythm track. That song also features a particularly goofy turn from frontman Brendan Suppression who, with his affable Aussie twang and unpretentious reflections on ordinary stuff like relationships and modern life (or, in this case, sex and television), comes across like a far more relatable version of Mark E. Smith.

Kathryn Calder: Are You My Mother? review

The most striking moment on Kathryn Calder's solo debut comes early. Halfway through the prettily subdued opener, "Slip Away," the song bursts unexpectedly free of its gently dappled piano tones and measured calm, the drums kick into rollicking gear, and Calder lets loose a joyous, irresistible, wordless vocal line strikingly like the ones her uncle, Carl Newman, used to write for Neko Case to sing with the New Pornographers. But those glorious, fleeting seconds (the eruption happens again later in the song) are the closest Are You My Mother? comes to the unbridled power pop/rock favored both by that group (of which Calder has become an increasingly active member) and by Immaculate Machine, the band of high-school chums turned indie rock pros that was until recently her primary outfit. Somewhere between a "traditional" singer/songwriter album and an exercise in one-woman popcraft à la Newman's band-based solo records, Mother finds Calder alternating between rhythmically driven uptempo numbers (the peppy, noodly two-step "Castor and Pollux"; the frantic, somewhat slapdash-sounding "A Day Long Past Its Prime") and mellower, more introspective fare. She strikes a happy medium on the folksy, metrically quirky "If You Only Knew," a jaunty singalong complete with handclaps and shambling, desultory group percussion, and on the breezy "Follow Me into the Hills," which manages to suggest both loping acoustic country and tiki-lounge exotica with its mandolin breaks, swaying tropical beat, and big twangy guitar. But by and large, in spite of Calder's rocking pedigree, Mother is generally most effective at its most restrained. With repeated listens, cuts like the autumnal, string-laden "Down the River" and the wistful waltzes "Arrow" and "So Easily" (the former a piano-based lilt, the latter stripped down to the sparsest picked acoustic guitar notes and featuring an understated harmony from Case) stand out as the album's most resonant, if only because their sparer settings allow Calder's finest gifts – the strength of her melodies and the girlish sweetness of her winsome vocals – to shine through most clearly. Despite its poignant back-story – Calder recorded the album at her family home in Victoria while caring for her ailing mother, who died a year before its release – Mother's emotional impact tends to be more indirect and evocative than specific and tangible. Its varied but always thoughtful musical character, as much as its nuanced, sometimes ambiguous lyrics, make it feel like an understated, vital reminder to bring a gentle approach to life's struggles.

Jenny Wilson: Hardships! review

The second album by this acclaimed Swedish songstress largely jettisons the appealing if skewed pop sensibility of her debut, along with most of that album's electronic underpinnings, for a prickly, nebulously political collection of songwriterly art-pop, emphasis firmly on the "art." While Love and Youth wasn't exactly light listening, it could somewhat reasonably be mentioned in the same breath as Wilson's friends and collaborators (and compatriots) Robyn and The Knife; Hardships!, though, plods a portentous path far from the Scandinavian synth-pop superhighway, evoking instead the idiosyncratic likes of Kate Bush and Tori Amos. Wilson's curious, powerfully theatrical soprano has earthy hints of gospel and soul, while the piano-led chamber arrangements offer occasional flashes of levity, particularly in the percussion department – though the album's menagerie of handclaps and xylophones can just as easily sound sinister as cheerful. But most of the interest here (human or otherwise) derives from the lyrics, which deal explicitly with domesticity and motherhood, forming a loose song cycle/concept album that addresses those topics primarily through themes of struggle, escape and disillusionment. Wilson combines narrative details redolent of rural poverty (strong-willed horses, threadbare socks, burnt soup and potatoes) with military, maritime, natural world and nursery-rhyme imagery to create vivid, uneasy juxtapositions, not unlike the rifle she wields with such impassive poise on the album's cover. The dinner-time escalation in "Pass me the Salt" is typical: "Come on now eat your food/cartridges, fried and stewed/this table has become a combat zone." The title song likewise compares the trials of motherhood to the stuff of bloody battlefields, bemoaning the unheralded heroism involved in an implacable, oddly antagonistic tone that reduces a well-reasoned feminist viewpoint to bleak, heartless logic. Wilson adopts a similarly chilly, queasily pragmatic, almost resentful view of family relationships throughout, with partners and children alike: when she wails, by way of a lullaby, "I wanna leave you baby/but our veins are entwined," you get the sense she really does want to leave her infant. The final two songs represent something of a thaw, musically as well as lyrically (one features a loose-limbed sax solo) – tellingly, they're the only ones save for the surreal memoiristic opener "The Path" ("I wanted to be born, so I crawled out of my mother") to contain the word "love." Love does not come easily in a world filled with hardships. And Hardships! is not an easy affair on any level.

AMG review round-up, volume XII: mediocre dance music, mostly

haw, well, there's some decent music on these releases...could probably distill them all down to an excellent dance mix actually... but with one or two exceptions, none of them are really what i'd call great albums. so that's your catch-all, i guess.

in no precise order, but generally moving backwards in time from this year to a year or two ago:

Fischerspooner: Entertainment review

Fischerspooner's woozy, percolating keyboard riffs and stylized camp theatrics were considerably more striking in 2001, when the group first emerged, than they are at the tail-end of a decade that's long since done the '80s-resuscitating synth-wave thing to death. Fischerspooner have been largely disregarded since the beleaguered electro-clash beachhead of their debut, despite (or perhaps because of) an entirely respectable sophomore effort, Odyssey, in 2005. But their pop-friendly brand of nu-electro has exerted such an influence on the sounds of the 2000s that this self-released third album, another four years down the line, winds up sounding unremarkably pedestrian (instead of, say, garishly dated, which is how it might have sounded ten years ago.) Which is not to say it's without its charms. Fischerspooner have always been more song-oriented than many of their contemporaries, closer in spirit to a pop/rock band than an electronic dance production outfit (it was the layered vocal hooks, as much as their trademark oscillating bassline, that made "Emerge" such a compelling signature), but they've also always reveled in superficiality, and both of those tendencies are very much apparent here. In musical terms, that means that most of Entertainment is built around the vocals, which is perfectly fine as long as you don't pay too much attention to the actual words. It works out great on upbeat, blithely meaningless cuts like the strutting glam-funk opener "The Best Revenge," which features Bowie sideman Robert Aaron on sax and trumpet, the intriguing, recession-ready electro-clash throwback "Money Can't Dance," and especially the peppy "Supply and Demand," which could pass for vintage Vince Clarke. The vague pseudo-politicking of "Infidels of the World Unite" and the vapid robotomorphism of "We Are Electric" are somewhat more tiresome, while the darker "Amuse Bouche" and "Door Train Home" come off as dreary, dirgelike trudges. The album's nadir, however, is the asinine "Danse en France," proof that inane lyrics are definitely not made better in translation, even if the Frenchmen over at Kitsuné records thought this was worth releasing as a single. A mixed bag, then, but with enough classicist synth pop pleasures to satisfy the committed and the curious. It's far from revolutionary and it's certainly not deep, but as often as not, Entertainment at least manages to live up to its title.

The Whip: bio and X Marks Destination review

The Whip straddle the electronic/rock divide with a wider stance than most of their late-00s hipster-dance contemporaries. Their debut may be titled X Marks Destination, but their stylistic aim isn't as deadly focused as that might suggest: targets veer across the map from the romantically epic pop of "Sirens," with its a rose-tinted, Hollywood-ready sheen, to the gritty, instrumental electro of breakout single "Divebomb," which layers hypnotically swirling synth bleeps with overdriven, Justice-style guitars to fashion an effectively frothy if vaguely perfunctory banger. The bulk of the album falls somewhere in between these poles, lashing feverish, fizzy electronic workouts to guitars-forward, quasi-punkish pop slabs that try, mostly successfully, to have it both ways. These work best when the melodies are upfront and gleaming, as on "Sister Siam" and the swooning, unflinchingly New Order-ish "Frustration." They suffer significantly when the obnoxiously inane lyrics become too prominent, particularly on the execrable "Save My Soul," or whenever the band latches on to empty, ad nauseum catch phrases like "lights down in the dark" or "I can feel the heat" or "I wanna be trash" (a curiously dated, "Loser"-like grunge-era sentiment, albeit married to a pummeling post-post-punk stomp.) And otherwise they tend to fade into indistinct, lackluster neutrality. Still, even if their would-be blazes burn with a reflected fire and a somewhat mannered, over-familiar hand-me-down hedonism, the Whip are at least competent synthesists of simple pleasures, with an unexpected sweet tooth and enough vitality to offer the blog-house constituency some A-grade kindling for late-decade dancefloors.

Late of the Pier: Fantasy Black Channel review

It's a yawnably familiar back-story: following a string of hyped independent singles, a band of young upstarts drops its eagerly anticipated first LP to the notoriously hyperbolic adulation of the British music press. As U.S. listeners would discover five months later, when an Astralwerks release in early 2009 gave them a chance to hear what all the fuss was about, it's a familiar sound, too: in essence, the same basic mode of synth-heavy dance-punk that has dominated blogs and indie club nights ever since the Rapture's breakout early in the decade. But while Late of the Pier might be the latest in a lengthy line of '80s-indebted electro-rock synthesists, up through and including their frequently RIYL'd counterparts Klaxons, they are also among the most inventive and musically ambitious acts to ply that sound. It's those qualities, rather than any specifically identifiable musical characteristics, that have earned the foursome comparisons to figures like Frank Zappa, Todd Rundgren, and Brian Eno, and which make their eclectic and genuinely experimental-feeling debut, Fantasy Black Channel, such an invigorating and, for the most part, successful enterprise. If nothing else, it's certainly a wild ride. Although five out of its 12 tracks had previously appeared as singles, only a couple of them (the riff-centric, Gary Numan-ish "Space and the Woods," the classicist dance-rocker "Broken," and perhaps the kinetic, jerky "Heartbeats") play out like obvious singles in the typical pop sense. Otherwise, the album tends to dole out its abundant hooks in less than conventional ways, favoring elaborate, multi-part song structures with extended instrumental interludes and transitions (starting from the absurdly grandiose glam guitar fanfare of the opening "Hot Tent Blues"), "ambient" breakdowns, and periodic tempo shifts (the intermittently irresistible mini-epic "Bathroom Gurgle" features at least four). Along the way, Late of the Pier pack in nu disco and Afro-funk grooves, Gang of Four-styled post-punk, "tribal" found-percussion workouts, video game squelches, Justice-like electro bombast, vocals that veer from mildly aggro screaming to sweet pop/R&B crooning, and copious amounts of glam metal riffage (shades of the Darkness), among other things. With so much structural and stylistic fragmentation, it's a wonder that the album flows as smoothly and hangs together as well as it does -- much credit is due, very likely, to producer Erol Alkan for helping to rein in and give shape to the band's youthful creative abandon, which from the sound of things could easily have resulted in an indulgent mess. Truth be told, it's still a bit of a mess, but it's a glorious and galvanizing one: a convoluted construction crammed with so many immediately gratifying moments that it takes multiple listens to extricate them all -- in other words, enough instant pleasures to easily outweigh its occasional grating, overreaching, and faltering. The only question remaining is whether or not you have the energy to keep up with them.

Thieves Like Us: bio and
review

Yes, it's another late-2000s band inspired by 1980s post-punk and electro-disco. Thieves Like Us might be distinguished, slightly, by their jet-setting international backstory, some traces of which are audible in these grooves: a sprinkling of synth pop sweetness from Sweden (home to 2/3 of the group); a glob of garish glamour from their erstwhile headquarters in New York City; a fistful of French-touch filter 'n' thump, per their present Parisian base of operations. Most of all, their music is marked by a gritty, beguiling moodiness and seamy decadence that feel somewhat romantically redolent of Berlin, where the band met and formed. (It's notable and curious that they never lived in England, and particularly in Manchester, where one might trace perhaps the most prominent roots of their sound.) Still, possibly because this welter of influences adds up to something a bit too indiscriminately intercontinental, these Thieves do often come off as just another trendy outfit hawking tawdry 20-year time warps, albeit with more streamlined sonics than many. They're at their worst, or at least their most redundant, on half-hearted would-be dancefloor fare like the dopey disco of "Drugs in My Body" (their Kitsuné-approved signature single; knock-off filter-house with none of the requisite joie de vivre), its faster, electro-burbling B-side "Fass," or the thumpy-twerky "Miss You." The problem isn't that these songs are derivative, although they are, but that they're just deadly dull, which is about the only thing a dance jam definitely shouldn't be. They're fairly melodically anemic, for one thing, but the clearest culprit is Andy Grier's flat, tiresome vocals, which barely bother with pitch, let alone inflection (they don't even sound knowingly bored and blank-eyed in a deliberate, stylized way). It makes some sense, then, that the best moments on Play Music are the more sober and sedate numbers, typically drenched in a lush synthetic haze, wherein Grier's vocals, when they're audible at all, take a backseat to the frequently luminous synth and drum programming. Thankfully, these pieces make up a large proportion of the album, among them the shimmering, slow-burning opener, the pulsating "Headlong into Night," and the uncharacteristically warm and open-feeling "Desire," which projects a certain looseness within its gently churning Motorik pulse.

The Whitest Boy Alive: Dreams and Rules reviews

The Whitest Boy Alive no doubt intend their moniker facetiously, if not a bit self-mockingly, but it's a useful cue in pinpointing their music, which does in fact display many qualities frequently associated with whiteness. Fortunately, unfunkiness is not primary among them. Splitting the unlikely but not insurmountable distance between the hushed acoustic folk-pop of Kings of Convenience, Erlend Øye's previous main concern, and the stylish electronic dance-pop of his solo work, TWBA set their sights on gently grooving indie rock/pop, achieved through essentially non-electronic means (guitar, bass, drums, and the occasional electric piano.) Their grooves may not be particularly soulful, but they're toe-tapping enough, and very smartly performed, with an interlocking crispness that recalls Phoenix or perhaps a much less twitchy version of early Talking Heads. That smoothness and precision -- in rhythmic execution, instrumental tone, lyrical diction, and overall sound -- is, for better or worse, Dreams' most notable feature. Call it sonic purity and aesthetic clarity, or call it smarmy slickness and stuffy sterility; it's a pretty white sound either way you take it. But however polite or uptight it may be, pop music floats or fails on the strength of the songs, which in this case are frustratingly hit or miss. There are a handful of winners here -- the peppy kick-off "Burning," the jumpy quasi-dance-punk of "Fireworks,"the brooding "Done with You" and the sweet, hesitantly self-affirming "Don't Give Up" -- and they are gleaming. Too much of the remainder of the album, though, lags in too-similar, blandly vanilla territory; less white hot than white bread.

Erlend Øye was responsible for a couple of the more quietly influential releases of the early 2000s -- the Kings of Convenience's wispily gentle, prophetically titled debut Quiet Is the New Loud and his affable, microhouse-popularizing DJ-Kicks set, not to mention his fine vocal contributions to Röyksopp's early singles -- all thoroughly excellent if hardly earth-shattering work. In the latter part of the decade, though, his output and impact seemed sadly diminished as he lapsed into a middling, milquetoast groove as frontman for the smooth pop outfit the Whitest Boy Alive. The group's second outing is, like everything Øye touches, never less than pleasant, poppy, and unfailingly polite. And his Berlin-based bandmates know their way around a nimble lite-funk strut as well as anyone (Maroon 5 come to mind, as do Phoenix in their more straightforward moments). Newly official member Daniel Nentwig, in particular, offers some tastily chunky electric piano tidbits; his presence on every track (as opposed to only two) helps make this a fuller-sounding affair than the band's debut, as well as somewhat more kinetic. And Øye's croon is as golden as ever, gliding through his earnestly considered reflections on ill-fated relationships. But sound is one thing and spirit another, and the album feels, on the whole, more tired than inspired. A handful of marginal highs aside (the minor urgency of "Courage," the fluid sobriety of "Gravity"), it's hard to shake the feeling that Rules would be a lot more satisfying if it broke a few more.

Nordpolen: bio and På Nordpolen review

The songs that Pelle Hallström writes as Nordpolen often deal with teenage anxiety and alienation, although non-Swedish-speaking listeners would be forgiven for missing the darker undercurrents in his work. Musically, most of På Nordpolen is about as far as you can get from melancholy, at least on the surface: bombastic, major-key chord progressions, shimmering synthesizers, soaring vocal harmonies, and big, thumping disco beats. There's something unusual, though, about the way these familiar components come together. While frequently sweeping and anthemic, the effect is far from the over the top electro-pop giddiness one might expect -- instead of gloriously glammy, the songs feel uncomfortably overstuffed with emotion, ready to burst. Whether they are bursting with hope or despair, or some all-too-human combination of the two, is harder to say without recourse to the lyrics. The name Nordpolen (North Pole) suggests both utter loneliness and holiday cheer (although, strictly speaking, that's an American association, not a Swedish one) and, strangely enough, these epic, enraptured tracks seem like appropriate soundtracks to either. Structurally, Nordpolen's tunes are just as unpredictable and hard to pin down -- a stripped-down piano-and-voice passage might suddenly give way to churning synthesizer house, or vice versa, though as a whole it all feels relatively fluid. Indeed, for all the complexity of the arrangements, it's a little surprising how much the album all runs together: the pulsating single "Skimret" and the catchy closing title track offer the most resonant hooks, while the sweetly subdued "Under" and "Reglerna Har Ändrats" offer a respite from all that pounding, but not much else distinguishes itself, though it's all enjoyable enough as it passes. The album was co-produced by the Tough Alliance, and it shares some undeniable similarities with their work and -- even more so -- the sunny haziness of labelmates Air France, mixing and matching synths and beats with swirls of acoustic guitar, vaguely tropical percussion, and less identifiable sonic detritus (strings, accordions, sound effects). But while it offers an intriguing new twist on the idiosyncratic Sincerely Yours aesthetic, På Nordpolen is ultimately not quite as compelling as the label's previous releases, either in terms of pop songcraft or atmospheric evocation.

Kleerup: bio and Kleerup review

Andreas Kleerup's first album as a solo artist/producer bears the mixed blessing of having had its lead single and standout track become a sizable international hit...for another artist. "With Every Heartbeat," known to U.K. listeners as a chart-conquering comeback smash for the highly deserving Robyn, was initially presented in Sweden as Kleerup's debut single, nearly a year and a half before the album's eventual release. The good news is that it still sounds as phenomenal as when it first began making waves in late 2006, perhaps even more so in this sympathetic context than tacked onto reshuffled re-releases of Robyn; if there's nothing else here that can touch its glorious heights, there's plenty that comes close, though admittedly by following very similar pathways. Kleerup can certainly be accused of repeating the same tricks over and over, but at least he has some remarkably effective (if not immensely distinctive) tricks -- essentially, moderately paced and genially thumping robo-disco beats wedded to majestically buoyant chord progressions, played on synths that somehow manage to sound lush and punchy at the same time, with some bonus keyboard flutters for icing. And, of course, sweetly emotional pop melodies, often performed by female guest vocalists -- this album has six, all Swedes, each of whom injects some of her own personality (they all co-wrote their contributions), which helps add some welcome variety to the proceedings. Hence Lykke Li's "Until We Bleed" is languid and forlorn and Neneh Cherry's "Forever" is R&B-inflected and vaguely sociopolitical (complete with a tastefully deployed children's choir), while Marit Bergman's "3AM," with its ABBA-esque circular melody and club-friendly electro glide, is the album's brightest, sprightliest moment. The several instrumentals -- "Hero" and "Tower of Trellick" in particular -- demonstrate that the same basic approach can be just as effective without the vocals, and "Thank You for Nothing," essentially the backing track from Cyndi Lauper's Kleerup-produced "Lay Me Down," is nearly as good even stripped of its melody. Finally, Kleerup saves one of the best vocal tracks for himself, the touching, treble-filtered pop of "On My Own Again," which takes a slightly different tack, piling on the acoustic guitars and vocodered harmonies.

September: September review

Swedish dance-pop singer September (aka Petra Marklund) scored a U.S. dance hit in 2007 with "Cry for You," a sleek, tuneful bit of prime Euro-disco that borrowed its central riff from Bronski Beat's "Smalltown Boy." Robbins Entertainment followed up that success by releasing this debut album, which is actually a compilation of material from September's second and third Swedish albums, cherry-picking half of the tracks from 2005's In Orbit and all but three from 2007's Dancing Shoes. Taking a no-nonsense approach, it kicks off with her three biggest singles to date; both "Satellites" and the markedly bubblegummy "Can't Get Over" are decently catchy, but "Cry" is the obvious standout, managing to conjure both sophistication and a surprising degree of emotion from its fairly pedestrian frothy electro-pop arrangement and polished but powerful vocal turn. Save for one so-so ballad ("Flowers on the Grave"), the remainder of the selections follow the same basic approach in arrangement, tempo, and tone, to fine but generally diminishing results. At its worst, the material is slightly cringe-inducing (the dopey lyrics of "My Neighbourhood"; the shameless "Bette Davis Eyes" sample on "Midnight Heartache"); at its best it's well-executed but unremarkable. The main problem with September's music is that, unlike her Scandinavian counterparts such as Robyn and Annie, she doesn't project much personality -- her voice is decent, and even warm at times, but the lyrics are empty and she comes off as a complete cipher. Still, "Cry for You" is a strong enough track (though fairly faceless too, in its way) that even an album's worth of half-hearted imitations holds some interest for fans of the genre.

Sarah Nixey: bio and Sing, Memory review

The solo debut from Black Box Recorder chanteuse Sarah Nixey takes up the extroverted electronic pop trajectory signaled by that beloved band's (evidently) final album, Passionoia, and ventures a good deal further in that direction, emerging as a full-fledged collection of stylish 21st century dance-pop in the vein of Goldfrapp, Dot Allison, and Róisín Murphy. Characteristically, the emphasis is less on "pop" and "dance" than on "style," but Nixey and her collaborators (chief among them James Banbury, a former Auteur and member of the downtempo/IDM outfit InfantJoy) never let setting the right mood interfere with a good hook or a groove -- in any event, the album is both impossibly glamorous and immensely pleasurable to listen to. It's divided between dancefloor-ready tracks -- the sensational candy-disco single "Strangelove," the similar, slinkier "Beautiful Oblivion," the genially funky "Nothing on Earth," which could easily pass for latter-day Kylie Minogue tune -- and more downtempo, slightly trip-hop-inflected material both dark ("Masquerade") and sweet (the electro-romance "When I'm Here with You") and usually somewhere in between -- a split which is roughly mapped by the album's two titular halves, each of which has its own spoken preface. Lyrically, Nixey reveals herself to be a good deal more romantic and empathetic than her Black Box Recorder ghostwriters Luke Haines and John Moore, although she still has a touch of their black-humored bite and a similar preoccupation with the dark, twisted aspects of human relationships. Somehow, knowing that Nixey herself is the brain, and not just the lips, behind these lovelorn tales helps to take the edge out of her stiffly proper English enunciation, and in conjunction with a less chilly delivery and the lush, shimmering electronic warmth of the productions, makes Sing, Memory far more likely to melt your heart than leave it shivering.

Winona: bio and Rosebud review

The most obvious reference point for Winona's music is the dark, glossy, achingly elegant sound of late-'90s downtempo electronica and trip-hop, in particular its more commercially palatable exponents: Thievery Corporation, Kruder & Dorfmeister, Zero 7, and vocal-oriented acts like Mono and Dot Allison. It's not a kind of music that's particularly prevalent in the late 2000s, but it's still an effective style when done well, and these guys definitely have the chops (and more importantly, the taste) to pull it off. Which isn't too surprising, considering the résumé of central member Craig Armstrong. He had a hand in the creation of at least one bona-fide trip-hop classic -- Massive Attack's Protection, some traces of which are discernible here -- while his years of scoring films make the description "cinematic" (the genre's go-to adjective) even more of a foregone conclusion without being a meaningless cliché. For example, the stabbing, dancing, classical-sounding piano figures that flit throughout "Max" sound very much like something one might hear in the soundtrack to a slightly edgy art film, in a vaguely familiar but not obnoxiously overt way. With a sound palette drawn almost exclusively from vintage synths and drum machines, the album veers from tense, mildly menacing beat workouts like bleeping opener "The White Room" to ambient reveries like "De Nada" and "Winona Falls" and a curious hidden track that's equal parts stately and squirmy. There are also a handful of vocal numbers scattered across the track list -- the heavily vocodered, somewhat faceless disco-pop attempt "Celebrity," sleek, Massive-esque single "Without You," subdued electro-ballad "Indigenous," and some spoken French on the lush, melancholy "Always" -- which blend in fairly well with the overall mood, being a bit more direct than most of the instrumental material but not glaringly poppy. Contributing vocalist Lucy Pullin claims that Winona's music is "definitely not nostalgic," and it's true that Rosebud often summons a kind of austere beauty which seems to exist outside the realm of human emotion and sentimentality. Considering how flagrantly and fragrantly it recalls a particular, bygone approach to electronic mood music, however, it's bound to make some listeners of a certain age at least a little bit misty.

Kathy Diamond: bio and Miss Diamond to You review

Kathy Diamond's debut album, a full-length collaboration between the U.K.-based singer and veteran house producer Maurice Fulton, is a deeply satisfying and distinctive work of 21st century disco that draws extensively from soul, funk, and Latin. In a burgeoning and strikingly varied field of revivalist disco artists whose aesthetic and musical integrity trumps the considerable potential for novelty gimmickry -- among them the disparate likes of Metro Area, Sally Shapiro, and Hercules and Love Affair -- Miss Diamond to You stands out for its focus on establishing a consistent, evocative mood and a leisurely, luscious sense of groove rather than dynamic, overtly danceable beats, or even readily recognizable songs and melodies (although it has those things too). It's less blatantly electronic than any of the aforementioned acts, blurring the lines between synthetic and organic (and between modern and retro), with inconspicuously programmed drums and keyboards, subtle ambient textures, swaths of flange and reverb, and other understated flourishes integrated seamlessly with chunky, vintage-sounding synths, clavinets, organs and acoustic pianos, light and breezy guitars, layers of Latin-tinged percussion (cowbells, shakers, congas, pandeiros, sleigh bells...) and, most of all, impeccably fluid, funky basslines, usually of the slapped variety. Apart from some of those bass parts (which are simply beyond the capacity of machines), it's hard to be entirely sure what was programmed and what was played -- nearly everything here sounds like it could have been performed by a live band (Chic springs to mind), except that Fulton was evidently responsible for the whole thing -- but all that's really relevant is how gorgeously it all flows together in a cohesive, unified whole. In fact, the album's uniformity of sound -- there are a lot of different instruments but not, ultimately, a whole lot of textural range -- could potentially be taken as an issue, since it means the whole tends to overshadow the individual tracks. That's not helped by the brief a cappella fragments, taken from various songs, which are sequentially mismatched throughout the track list as if to suggest that the vocal hooks are interchangeable. And Diamond's sweet, wafer-thin voice, while well-suited to the album's languid, smokily intimate vibe, doesn't do a great deal to elevate her lyrics and melodies into truly charismatic or memorable territory. Still, the slyly poppy "All Woman" and "On & On" stand out as well worth hearing in their own right, as do the mostly instrumental electro-samba "Until the Sun Goes Down" and the thickly layered keyboard funk of "Over," with its curious vocal tweaking.