Album Review: Impossible Ark: A Compilation - Various Artists

Released on Unfold, Impossible Ark: A Compilation features a selection of recent tracks from the stable of jazz stable Impossible Ark.

Modern jazz is always in danger of trying far to hard as far as BlackPlastic is concerned - adding the tag to another genre or getting so noodle-y that any semblance of melody evaporates just doesn't do jazz justice. Impossible Ark's merits are obvious in that this set doesn't risk any of this - instead it treads a pure line through a set of tracks that are timeless enough to make guessing their age practically impossible.

From the opening of the floaty and spacious 'What Is Life' from the Fiction Trio this album is just drenched in class. The Rhythmatic Orchestra's 'African Mailman' fuses salsa rhythms to a pair of jazzy solos from a piano and a flute, creating that perfect laid back afternoon vibe.

Jeb Jay Nichols provides a couple of vocal tracks, with the organic sounding 'Lake Whitfield' proving a highlight. Contemporary vocal jazz is often in danger of losing the magic beneath a collection of too highly polished session musicians - not so here, Nichols' band provide some of the most beautifully understated instrumentation BlackPlastic has ever heard.

Accessible yet authentic - Impossible Ark: A Compilation is genuinely a little bit spellbinding. Ending on the muted brass of The Voices of Time's 'Solstice', BlackPlastic cannot imagine a better way to spend the day than sipping coffee and taking in all the sites the world as to offer whilst soaking in these jazzy vibes.

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Impossible Ark: A Compilation is released through Unfold on 5 October, available for pre-order from Amazon.co.uk on CD [Affiliate Link].

Download: Lie Down (Live At The Green Room) - Long Range

BlackPlastic never really got around to properly listening to the debut album, Madness & Me, from Phil Hartnoll (of Orbital) and Nick Smith's Long Range, but from what we hear it is one of the best ambient albums in years. If this track is anything to go by then that sounds believable.

BlackPlastic struggles with ambient. It seems to be a genre of choice for many a bedroom producer but it is incredibly difficult to make it work and to produce something with any real emotional gravitas. Much like Global Communication, whose 76:14 is probably the best ambient album ever produced, what makes 'Lie Down' work is that it doesn't let the genre get in the way - there is still considerable variety, ebb and flow over the track's eight-minutes, and it is unsurprisingly reminiscent of Orbital's better work.

Download 'Lie Down (Live At The Green Room)' by Long Range [right click, save as].

Long Range release a new EP, Control Me, on Pure Mint Recordings on 1 December 2009. Visit the Long Range website for more info.

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Video: Ljósið - Ólafur Arnalds

Ólafur Arnalds - Ljósið (Official Music Video) from Erased Tapes on Vimeo.

BlackPlastic first discovered the rather beautiful music of Ólafur Arnalds earlier this year and, being a sucker for contemplative Icelandic music, it had us hooked.

If it wasn't for Kitsune Noir however there is a good chance we'd have missed out on this staggeringly beautiful music video for 'Ljósið', taken from Arnalds' latest album Found Songs. The video was created by Esteban Diácono off of his own back but Arnalds liked it so much it is now the official video. The track is great but seriously, this video takes it to a whole new level - the motion is so smooth and captivating.

Enjoy

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Single Review / Download: Gave It Up - Pollyn

BlackPlastic has spent much of the last week digging on this slice of melancholic pop from Pollyn. 'Lost It All' sounds like the by-product of Annie and Robyn trying to out-do each other in the 'sad song' stakes whilst hanging out in a smokey little karaoke bar and in BlackPlastic's book that can only be a good thing. The slightly jangly backing track is just the right side of La Roux and the track drips with just enough sassy desperation that you can't figure out whether whether the singer is a basket case or not.

Check out the live studio performance:

Things get even better on Peter Visti's mix, which sees the whole tracked turned into a cosmic disco stormer... Sharp percussion and a muted guitar giving the whole track a moody, lost-on-the-dancefloor vibe and the break five minutes in, complete with discordant synths, really makes the whole thing a little epic.

Download 'Gave It Up' - Pollyn [right click, save as]

Download 'Gave It Up (Peter Visti Remix)' - Pollyn [right click, save as]

Head over to Pollyn's official site for more.

Album Review: FabricLive 48 - various mixed by Filthy Dukes

FabricLive 48 is something of a return to form for the series. Of sorts at least.

Following a recent mixture of slightly too fashionable, genre-of-the-moment artists and non-descript mixes FabricLive 48, under the control of the Filthy Dukes, gets back to the bread and butter of what the FabricLive discs can be when they are at their best.

It's eclectic, wonky disco, house and acid drenched tech-house. And it is pretty much all right up BlackPlastc's street. Aeroplane's mix of Sébastien Tellier's 'Kilometer' is still gloriously paced, thick like treacle. 80skidz 'Miss Marz' still sounds timeless, energetic with a hint of melancholy and The Proxy remix of Tiga's 'What Your Need' descends into suitable chaos as the Soulwax mix of Daft Punk's 'Robot Rock' kicks in.

But here is the problem: you probably know all of these tracks. And you probably know most of the other tracks on the album too. There are some great, inventive moments - Mr Oizo's 'Pourriture 7' mixing into Jack Peñate's 'Tonight's Today' is one such stroke of genius. And some tracks are good enough to survive the exposure - we certainly don't resent hearing Lifelike's 'Sequencer' more than is strictly necessary. But, seriously... BlackPlastic does not need to hear Mujava's 'Township Funk' again. Probably ever.

FabricLive 48 is like a mix album made by a friend featuring a stack of you favourite records from the past year or so. It would be a great mix to hear out but without much inventiveness in the tracklist this is unlikely to keep you coming back.

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Album Review: See Mystery Lights - YACHT

In what has at times felt like a somewhat turgid year musically YACHT's debut album for their current form, as a duo rather than just an alterego for Jona Bechtolt, feels like a palate cleanser.

YACHT's initial release for DFA, 'Summersong' (a track actually inspired by the DFA label), set bloggers tongues a-wagging when it was released (last year) but See Mystery Lights picks up the ball and runs, runs, runs with it.

So what you get is an album that, admittedly, sounds post-punk enough to almost actually be from 1982. BlackPlastic isn't about to get holier than thou and tell you to drop this in favour of the new retrospective release from San Francisco post-punkers The Unit though (but you should definitely check that out too). And that is because See Mystery Lights sounds so damn fresh it is irresistible.

More than a simple revisitation of the past, YACHT draw inspiration from some great bands and twist their ideas to create something new. So the throbbing calypso chant of 'Ring The Bell' positively beams with knowing pop-sassiness whilst 'The Afterlife' chimes in with what sounds like the hook from Desmond Dekker's 'Israelites' over a bleepy bouncing synth backing.

Ultimately YACHT just hit on that key post-punk component: pop. Pure infectious pop. It's easy to forget the role pop had in post-punk but listen to Bow Wow Wow and Devo (not to mention the output of most of the bands that made up the New Romantic movement) and it is a wonder why YACHT's album feels like the first candy-pop post-punk record for our generation.

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Available now on Amazon.co.uk on CD and MP3 [affiliate links].

Album Review: Fabric 48 - various mixed by Radio Slave

Radio Slave's Fabric album has it's moments of pleasure but still ultimately disappoints.

If you read regularly you likely know that BlackPlastic has long championed Eskimo Recordings' compilations - frankly they are the best producer of compilations currently around - and as such maybe it is too much to expect Fabric 48 to live up to Radio Slave's release for that label, entitled Creatures of the Night (check the BlackPlastic review of that album here). It wouldn't be the first time someone has struggled with a compilation for another label having thrived on Eskimo - just check the Glimmers' okay-but-not-fantastic mixes for DJ Kicks and Fabric.

But the problem is that Fabric 48 paints a very dry picture of Radio Slave. Where Creatures of the Night had a variety of styles, from shouty P Diddy through to The Osmonds via The Kills, Fabric 48 has, well... 13 cuts of tech-house. And not even the exciting, edge of your seat acid influenced stuff. There are tribal rhythms andloooooooong tracks and spoken vocals occasionally but at what point exactly are we supposed to get excited?

And the sad thing is that this is probably closer to what a current Radio Slave set sounds like. Where has the subversiveness gone from the early days where a Radio Slave remix would do something totally unexpected and still consistently turn out great? Why do DJs and producers think everyone is content with a safe set of four-four techno? What drugs are we supposed to be chomping on to make this do anything for us?

Maybe we are wrong. This might be very sophisticated and if you like tribal, deep techno and house, that might be enough. As far as we are concerned tou can keep it - BlackPlastic would much rather get rowdy to Creatures of the Night's dark corners and freaky sounds.

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Fabric 48 is out now, available on CD from Amazon.co.uk [affiliate link].

Album Review: Two Sunsets - Pastels / Tenniscoats

BlackPlastic may not be familiar with neither The Pastels nor Tenniscoats (an yes, they are two bands) but what we are pretty damn sure of is the fact that this album is beautiful in such an inclusive fashion that it seems hard to imagine someone not enjoying it.

Sure, it is very, very nice - you won't find anything that will scare your nan - but here on Two Sunsets that is definitely a good thing. With carefully picked melodies and a joyfully lazy pace this is an album that feels like a sit down with a cup of tea and a good book.

With The Pastels' experience seeking out and releasing Japanese pop-folk records on their Geographic label, the progression to collaborating with Japanese pop duo Tenniscoats is a natural one.  And the influence is clear, and not just on the several tracks with Japanese vocals, including Title track 'Two Sunsets', but also in the space and atmosphere in the songs.  The result feels distinctly inclusive.

And it is inclusive because these tunes are just so approachable and the instrumentation so interesting. The songs are catchy as hell even when the vocals are intelligible. BlackPlastic struggles to come up with an example of anything similar that doesn't hail from Iceland - a telling thing given how successful Sigur Rós continue to be despite very rarely singing in a language that much more than half a million people on the planet even understand.

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Two Sunsets is out now on Domino, available from Amazon.co.uk on CD.

Download: End of August Mix - The Subs

The Subs, hailing from Belgium, are soon to hit the UK for a series of live dates (including Bestival) and to give you a taste of what to expect we have a pretty nice little mix covering a selection of tracks including the Pixies awesome 'Debaser'.

Check out the tracklist - The Subs End of August Mix:

1. Explorers Of The Nile - We Are All Egyptians (intro)

2. Bloody Beetroots - Robmorama

3. AutoErotique - Gladiator (Steve Aoki & DJ AM Remix)

4. Cassius - Youth, Speed , Trouble, Cigarettes (The Subs Remix)

5. Duck Sauce - Nasty

6. Pixies - Debaser

7. Vitalic - Valetta Fanfares

8. Simian Mobile Disco - Run (Subs Edit)

9. B harp

10. The Subs - Mitsubitchi

11. Diplo & Laidback Luke - Hey

12. Boysnoize & Erol Alkan - Waves

Download The Subs' mix [right click, save as].

Get more info on The Subs' MySpace.

Comment: Our prediction - the Mercury Music Prize

Not so long ago we predicted who would get shortlisted for the Mercury Music Prize and whilst we weren't exactly spot on we managed to guess seven out of the 12... Not too shabby!

With the event happening tomorrow we thought it was time to lay our predictions down on paper (albeit virtual) and put our money where our mouth is.

The shortlist in full then:

• Bat For Lashes - Two Suns
• Florence & The Machine - Lungs
• Friendly Fires - Friendly Fires
• Glasvegas - Glasvegas
• Kasabian - West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum
• La Roux - La Roux
• Led Bib - Sensible Shoes
• Lisa Hannigan - Sea Sew
• Speech Debelle - Speech Therapy
• Sweet Billy Pilgrim - Twice Born Men
• The Horrors - Primary Colours
• The Invisible - The Invisible

Pondered we have but BlackPlastic still thinks the smart money is on The Horrors, with Bat For Lashes and Florence & The Machine close also-rans. If it were down to us though we would commend that loved up debut from Friendly Fires... It's just too gorgeous to resist.

Check out the BBC site for coverage on the even.

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