Album Review: The Repeat Factor - Portformat

BlackPlastic used to love hip-hop but these days we can't help but feel let down by the genre... Maybe we were just never real fans of real hip-hop, maybe when we spent so much time listening to those early Roots albums, the Tribe Called Quest back-cat and anything J Dilla touched we were just enjoying the stuff middle class suburban kids are supposed to dig. Maybe we weren't real.

But the truth is that if someone has made a genuinely brilliant hip-hop album in the past four years then we missed it. Even the near-universally-acclaimed MF Doom feels over-hyped.

It's with some surprise and a pang of nervousness then that BlackPlastic snuck a smile and shuffled back-and-forth to the beat on Portformat's debut album. Because on first listen it's good. Very good.

Bad news first. If you wanted to level criticism at The Repeat Factor you would be justified in complaining that the vocals fall short. Portformat's The Repeat Factor is really a demonstration of his production skill - the vocals suffer in the way that you would expect of an album that is producer, not MC, lead. They aren't bad - they just don't lead the music or captivate the listener.

What is good though is the production. With a loose, filtered feel it is vey reminiscent of J Dilla - but not the oft-immitated, vocal-sample based work he produced towards the end of his career. Instead The Repeat Factor sounds more like his work with A Tribe Called Quest on The Love Movement.

And it may be BlackPlastic's soft-spot for indie hip-hop showing again but The Repeat Factor is best when it strays into the left-field, as on 'U Gotta Find', the wonderfully textured 'Mothership' or on any of the superb instrumentals (or which particular note goes to 'Bionic Arms').

The jazzy touches and bags of space make The Repeat Factor shine. This is an album that manages to sound modern and yet still demonstrates that less IS more. It just about restores BlackPlastic's faith in hip-hop.

BP x

The Repeat Factor is released on Tokyo Dawn on 3 December 2009.

Single Review: I Won't Kneel - Groove Armada

'I Won't Kneel' is Groove Armada's first proper single from a new album since the better-than-expected Soundboy Rock. And it would be easy to write it off and BlackPlastic is sure that many - except PopJustice possibly - will. Groove Armada just aren't cool.

But we tell you something - 'I Won't Kneel' is fab. It's a sparkling-modern-power-ballad-epic. It's a hands-in-the-air girl-power-boy-power-everyone-power liberation anthem. It's not cool, but it tears the fucking roof off and beside, this is what good pop music should be like. Gaga can goo goo all she wants, give us this any day.

BP x

I Won't Kneel is out now, available on Amazon.co.uk on CD, 12" and for a limited time on MP3 for just £0.29 [affiliate links].

MP3: Tupac Robot Club Rock (Kill Em All, Let Wiley Sort It Out remix) - Filthy Dukes

BlackPlastic recently reviewed Filthy Dukes' FabricLive album and, pretty much, we said it was good in a somewhat predictable way...

This track is not, as we hoped, some sort of Daft Punk / Tupac mashup but is instead a fairly full-on Wiley-style banger. It could definitely be accused of being more than just a little bit cheesy (check those keys!) but the bassline ensures it is at least worthy of a few moments of your time and is fairly representative of their Fabric disk... If you like this there's a good chance you will like FabricLive 48.

Download and enjoy! [right click, save as]

BP x

News: Seriously Social / Bugged Out 'Dream Party' Competition

BlackPlastic hearts Bugged Out almost as much as we heart dreaming up ridiculous party / 'high concept' night clubs and so it is with great joy that we heard about Seriously Social's dream party competition with Bugged Out.

The idea is simple - you've got £30,000 and Bugged Out DJ Johnny Burgess... the world is your oyster. Every idea is considered by a panel of judges before the best 25 go before a public vote. If your party idea is selected then you get to do it for real!

BlackPlastic has already entered... Expect photos if we win!

To give you some inspiration here is Johnny recounting his favourite ever Bugged Out night (it made BlackPlastic a bit emotional):

My favourite Bugged Out night. Daft Punk, Liverpool, 1998. 
From Bugged Out my most enduring memory is from 1998. It was the fourth birthday and we had tried to get Daft Punk to DJ at it. They had played for us since our first year but we kept getting vague 'maybe's and then a  'no' from their manager Pedro Winter. So we printed the flyers and posters with the existing line up and carried on with the promotion. Then the week of the show Pedro got in touch to ask if we would be interested in Thomas Bangalter coming over to play a live set. Thomas had just had the biggest club hit of the summer as Stardust with Music Sounds Better With You and also that Gym Tonic tune. Of course we were up for it. Then the day before the show Pedro rang again and said that Guy Manuel would like to come along too so perhaps we would be interested in squeezing Daft Punk onto the bill after all. So when people turned up to the club they were greeted with the news. There was no twitter back then and people didn't even check websites that often so we announced it with the words Daft Punk scrawled on the existing posters in marker pen! Thomas played Music Sounds Better With You live from the DJ booth and then him and Guy-Man started their DJ set with Stevie Wonder's Happy Birthday. I think I had something in my eye at that moment. As it was a last minute booking I don't think we really paid anything other than their train fares and hotels so we left them a box set each of The Beach Boys Pet Sounds on their hotel beds as a way of saying thanks. Different times indeed...

To enter simply head over to the Seriously Social Facebook page, become a fan and submit your entry. Closing date is Monday but it only takes a minute.

BP x

Album Review: Tarot Sport - Fuck Buttons

Fuck Buttons' début left BlackPlastic cold. For all the experimentation it lacked focus and context compared to the abstract Beach Boys harmonies of Animal Collective. Back less than two years later with follow up, Tarot Sport is sees Andrew Weatherall on production duties (for the first time in sometime).

BlackPlastic, whilst no Weatherall obsessive, can't help but think his influence is a positive one. The resulting album is more focused, exciting and ultimately memorable.

There is no escaping the fact that Tarot Sport is much more of a dance album than its predecessor. Whilst the tracks never feel like they have been made for dancing they certainly feel more rhythmic and more electronic. One moment it will feel old school, with a progressive house vibe (opener 'Surf Solar') and next hard, epic and distorted in a way reminiscent of Nathan Fake's Hard Islands release from earlier this year.

There is still plenty of experimentation but it is the stripped back minimal (whisper it) trance of 'Olympians' that really flicks BlackPlastic's switch. Mixing epic synths, acid and distortion it feels as futuristic, global and hopeful as its title suggest.

Tarot Sport feels like running away: not to another country but rather another time. It also exceeds both the ambition and accomplishments of first album Street Horrrsing.

BP x

Tarot Sport is out now, available on CD and LP from Amazon.co.uk [affiliate links].

Album Review: Fabric 49 - various mixed by Magda

Fabric 49 technically hits the streets a month late because, goddamit, this is the most Halloween Fabric have ever got. Compiled and mixed by Magda (of Richie Hawtin's legendary Minus label) it's a spooky set of minimal, carved up with weird samples disorientating sounds.

If you haven't heard Magda DJ before then the sheer darkness of this album is reminiscent of The Glimmers' (or Glimmer Twins as they were then known) two Serie Noire compilations released on Eskimo five or six years back. The difference is that Fabric 49 contains much more upfront minimal techno compared to the John Carpenter soundtracks and early no-wave of the Glimmers' discs - this is a set clearly aimed at making you move.

And it still pretty much works - straddling a divide between atmosphere and dancing. Most of the tracks themselves are fairly nondescript but that is kind of the point. In contextualizing them, cutting several records together and never playing just one song at a time Magda has created something which feels like much more than the some of its parts... This is a mix that packs serious atmosphere.

It's true that things occasionally misfire and there are portions of the mix that are just too dry but when it is good, particularly on the closing third, Fabric 49 delivers something pretty special.

BP x

Fabric 49 is out now, available on Amazon.co.uk on CD [affiliate link].

Album Review:Live @ The Roundhouse London 2008 - X-Ray Spex

You'd think that now more than ever, on the cusp of a right-wing return to power and increasing dissatisfaction, with high unemployment an growing poverty, punk would be an inspiring force.

Sadly this live set from X-Ray Spex only succeeds to underline why punk had to die. Featuring their set from London's the Roundhouse last year (which itself covered every song bar-one from their only album) on CD and DVD it's a retrospective that may well appeal to the original fans but is unlikely to win over anyone who wasn't there the first time.

The problem with punk music was, for all it's noise and bravado, it was little more than rock 'n' roll played badly. And this live album only serves to reinforce that - its mixture of shouted vocals and brass at first feel fresh yet several tracks in it becomes apparent that this is all X-Ray Spex had or have.

Johnny Rotten recently appeared in the Observer's Music Monthly magazine and he mentioned how much he respects X-Ray Spex. BlackPlastic can't help but feel there are some considerably more worthwhile musical heroes people should be celebrating, but then again maybe we just aren't taking enough mescaline.

BP x

Out now on Year Zero, available on CD+DVD from Amazon.co.uk [affiliate links].

Album Review: Chimeric - Radian

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

An appropriate proverb when faced with the prospect of reviewing Radian's album Chimeric. From the opening distorted clicks and buzzes of 'Git Cut Noise' it is a thoroughly opaque listen. Disorientating and disturbed it is difficult to describe and, in all honesty, even more difficult to like.

Chimeric is, in essence, an avante-guarde slice of left-field experimentation. BlackPlastic would struggle to call much of it music and, if we are struggling, that doesn't bode well or many other people.

Radian have created an interesting piece of art here but we can't help but feel a little too much like they are attempting to school us. There is just no relief and no contrast and the result makes the album's relatively short 40-minute length feel a lot longer.

BP x

Chimeric is released on Thrill Jockey on 16 November, available for pre-order on Amazon.co.uk on CD and LP.

Album Review: Turntable Technology - Pablo

You don't know it but, if you are a 18 to 35 year old male at least, there is a good chance you are already familiar with Pablo's work. Having been responsible for the incidental music in Grand Theft Auto IV BlackPlastic had certainly heard an hour or so of his work before ever even hitting play on Turntable Technology.

The link is not obvious though. Only on the dramatic instrumental sounds of 'Rooftop Chase' does Pablo's soundtrack ability really come to the fore, although we have to concede it is a better effort than anything in Grand Theft Auto's incidentals.

Turntable Technology is a dizzying album. Two discs - the second of which is completely instrumental (featuring some tracks from the first, along with some original pieces) - and a massive 27 tracks. Frankly there is simply far too much content here to get to grips with. Recalling the turntablism and instrumental hip-hop of early Shadow, producing a record of such length is an interesting (if misguided) approach for a genre that normally focuses on playing as much as possible at once rather than dragging things out.

Inevitably the result is ultimately flawed, but it is perhaps brilliantly so. There is simply too much filler. The opening title track introduces the album's main theme - turntablism itself - through a stale monologue describing the features of a record player. Like we have never heard that trick before. It's old and tired before it has even begun and to make matters worse it's a trick the album repeats more than once. So far so yawn.

Yet elsewhere things aren't just good, they are great. 'The Story of Sampling' mixes together more raps than you would think you could recognise into one flow that genuinely works. But Turntable Technology is at its best when it abandons it's hip-hop roots as on 'Music Maestro' and the truly beautiful closing track to disc one, 'High Jazz'. Not since Shadow's first album and the Avalanche's epic Since I Left You has BlackPlastic been quite so spellbound by sample-based music.

The instrumentals on disc two are somewhat pointless when the originals are so close and they give the album a thrown together feel, which risks undermining the work that has gone in to this release. There are stand out moments from the unique tracks not featured on disc one however - the closing couplet of 'Journey's End' and 'Reincarnation' being prime examples.

Turntable Technology suffers from failing to be as clever as it thinks it is - less would certainly have been more - but the highlights are enjoyable enough to ensure the error is accepted, if not overlooked. It needs re-sequencing and editing but there is without doubt at least one album's worth of quality tunes here.

BP x

Turntable Technology is released on Soma on 9 November, available for pre-order on Amazon.co.uk on CD [affiliate link].

Album Review: The Man With The Case - Samuel L. Session

Sorry to any fans that have stumbled across the humble BlackPlastic blog but techno... Well, it's just inherently boring. By definition it is a genre so obsessed with detail and finish that, aside from the initial tracks out of Detroit that defined the genre, any release that proudly sports the label is pretty much unapproachable for the layman. You gotta have a belly full of pills or a head fulla maths to care.

Samuel L. Session has been releasing tracks since 1996 however, so you could be mistaken for falsely believing that this album, his first artist album, is either an exception to the rule or the turgid dirge that proves it.

Instead The Man With The Case is a bit of a mixed bag. It is unapologetically a techno album first and foremost. That means there is a lot of nothing here. BlackPlastic is ultimately left cold by the incessant beat, the measured perfection, the lack of passion. Yet there is still a little bit of charm to some of the tracks that make up this album. The highlight has to be album opener 'Time', which has the warmth of Chicago mixed with the robotic urban perception of Detroit. The result is a truly thrilling track that transcends genre-definition.

The problem is that whilst there are hints of the same passion and intelligence elsewhere on the album, the driving bass of 'My People' for example, they are ultimately spread so thinly across its length that they lose any bite. This is still just techno. Do yourself a favour - download 'Time' but leave the rest on the shelf.

BP x

The Man With The Case is out now on Be As One, available from Amazon.co.uk on CD [affiliate link].