Album Review: Le Danse - Slove

Slove's 'Do We Need' caught my attention with it's bleached post-punk sound over the summer. The French newcomers' debut, Le Danse, is released soon - could this be another addition to the ever growing list of too cool French bands?

Despite my impression when reviewing 'Do We Need', Slove don't actually have a vocalist. Instead they work with guest vocalists - almost every track on Le Danse features one, and most of them guest on a couple of tracks. It's obviously a well trodden approach amongst British electronic artists (The Chemical Brothers, Groove Armada) and it works well here, adding extra variety to the album's 48-minute length.

There are a number of styles referenced throughout Le Danse, from the Madchester loose funk of the title track to the heavy, electro grind of 'Flash'. the latter's vocal, delivered by Maik, combining with distorted bass to create something cold and clinical yet fragile.

On 'Carte Postale' Anne Laure's spoken word vocal counts in French whilst a simple muted guitar bumps along on a crashing drum track and it is here Slove are at their best. Minimal, structured concept tracks that combine a deft touch with surprising aggression. Similarly, 'Noisy Neige' is wave after wave of distortion with gently hummed vocals, an audio thick shake of rough and smooth.

Le Danse feels tight and, for an album of guest turns, relatively focused - a good thing for a debut. Slove feel like the post-punk Air, which I guess should be a compliment... The only nagging feeling is that you can't escape the thought that we have heard it all before.

BP x

Le Danse is due to be released on 3 October on Pschent.

Competition: Win tickets to see Foster the People

Recently I've been getting into Foster the People, whose pop rock rave rabble noise core has been working wonders in the office. It's the kind of sound that I'd imagine would be pretty good live, which is convenient because I have a pair of concert tickets to give away for their Shepards Bush gig on 25 November. 

The pair of Foster the People tickets are courtesy of event ticket comparison site GoSeeThem.com.

GoSeeThem.com are a concert ticket price comparison site for events in the UK. You can find out tour dates and importantly check who still has tickets available. They compare concert tickets from trusted and reliable ticket sites such as See Tickets, Ticketweb, Ticketmaster, Gigantic and more. The site is kept up-to-date with new tickets being added every day and prices are updated throughout the day. They are also increasing the number of ticket sellers available on site.

What you win?

2 stalls standing tickets to see Foster the People at O2 Shepherds Bush Empire, London on Friday 25 November 2011.

To enter simply send an email with your name and postal address to Competitions@BlackPlastic.co.uk [competition now closed] with the subject line 'I'm on a junket'. The deadline for entry is midnight on Sunday 9 October 2011.

Rules and restrictions:

Please note this competition is open to UK residents only. The winner will be selected at random and will be expected to cover their own travel and expenses. The prize is for tickets only.

BP x

Comment: Has pop eaten itself?

Following a conversation with a friend, who blogs over at kissthefist, yesterday I started reading Simon Reynold's Retromania. I'm literally nowhere into the book but my friend Dom wrote a post on his blog about it. And the problem is I'm not sure I agree with Reynolds' basic assertion that pop has eaten itself.

The premise behind the (non-fiction) book is that culture, music culture specifically, has all but died as a result of its own obsession with the past. The post-punk revival, concerts dedicated to playing single albums, re-masters, bands re-forming and movie biopics: it's easy to see where Reynolds is coming from.

But burying our heads in the myriad of awesome albums from the past is hardly a solution... It just makes us more likely to miss something genuinely new that comes out now. And that is half the point of Reynolds' argument, but still... There is a middle ground to be had, enjoying the classics whilst still believing in new music.

And, as I said, whilst I am nowhere in Reynolds' book yet (I have only just read the intro) I'm a bit incensed by the fact that he starts by listlessly reeling through the last decade picking out all of the bands that re-formed, re-imaginings and re-interpretations without stopping to pick out any of the more revolutionary moments.

Soulwax created a whole new form of rave culture that was too distant from the original to be a rebirth, and the elements of older tunes within their mashups too small a part of their overall ambition to ignore the impact they have had. Justice took the same ideal of dance music you can rock out to and ran with it.

And I don't much like dub step, but it is a whole new scene with a huge amount of relevance for some people. Will we look back on it as this generation's hip-hop? I doubt it, but it still resonates with the zeitgeist - contemporary youth's alienation and disaffection.

Maybe we lack 'scenes' in the way that we once had, but that is a symptom of our increasingly fragmented, choice filled society and is arguably a good thing: we aren't all the same. Sure, I'd love another 'rave' or 'post-punk' (I note here that actual punk was pretty derivative), but I'll settle for a stack of innovative albums. Look back over the past ten years and there are some thrilling new sounds to be heard... In response to Reynolds' list of uninspiring re-hashes, a list of some artists, off the top of my head, who have done and are doing something genuinely new:

Gang Gang Dance, Polar Bear, M.I.A., Flying Lotus, Outkast, Matthew Dear, Battles, Björk, Luomo, TV on the Radio, The Knife, Sigur Rós and Sufjan Stevens (who bizarrely Reynolds quotes with reference to the White Stripes being a re-hash, without really noting Stevens' creativity).

I'm jumping the gun and will plough on with the book, but what do you think? Is music really becoming as dull as Reynolds seems to suggest?

BP x

If you are interested you can buy Retromania from Amazon.co.uk [affiliate link].

Album Review: In The Grace Of Your Love - The Rapture

It has been five years since The Rapture's last album and, with the exception of the gloriously funky Timbaland produced 'No Sex For Ben', ages since we heard anything new from Luke Jenner and the band.

The Rapture were one of the first artists to release anything through DFA as a label and were certainly first to release a full album in the form of the DFA produced dark and strung-out yet funky Echoes. It was an album that helped plunge post-punk into the limelight.

But a lot has changed since then. Bassist and vocalist Matty Safer has left the band, they have left and then returned to the label that first broke them and most significantly Jenner's mother sadly tragically suicide, with Jenner having his first child and converting to Catholicism shortly after and.

You can feel the impact of these events on In the Grace of Your Love. Whilst previous album Pieces of the People we Love was carefree and celebratory - a collection of songs about parties, cars and music itself - this feels much more grounded and grown-up. With Jenner's father depicted on the cover seemingly effortlessly standing on a surfboard as he rides a wave it feels like The Rapture are in the same pose - willing themselves to land the moves without seeming to break a sweat.

On the whole they manage it. The album is bookended by polar opposite tracks. Opener 'Sail Away' is ballsy, almost arrogant, as Jenner rides the wave of emotion that the rest of us are seemingly excluded from. Musically it's strident, with soaring keys and a vocal that just feels like a continuous chorus. But it feels a million miles from the relative sophistication of Echoes. Whilst the latter was full of references to Gang of Four 'Sail Away' feels like U2 covered by the Killers. It comes off like a confusing compromise.

If the opener is a million miles from the Rapture we fell in love with then the closing track, 'It Takes Time to be a Man' is equally distant but in another direction. A ballad that sees Jenner openly making his moves whilst simultaneously demonstrating his sensitive side, it's punctuated with a surfer rock baseline, jazz keys and brass. For all the change it is a much more welcome entry into the band's catalogue than 'Sail Away' and packs the kind of album closing gravitas that benefitted the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' 'Maps' on their debut.

Elsewhere things are a bit less contentious. Much of In the Grace of Your Love feels midway between the darker first album and funk of Pieces of the People we Love. 'Miss You' is typically of this - the verses stripped back to little more than a thick drum beat and heavy bass. It feels like a contemporary re-imagining of the Rolling Stones track of the same name, desperation seeping from Jenner's vocals. 'How Deep Is Your Love' takes proto-house and rebuilds it around a brass heavy punk funk number.

'Come Back to Me' is one of the best songs on this record, it's song structure seemingly an inverse of the established norm of starting quiet and building to a crescendo. With a looping, dubby start based around a twisted accordion sound it pulls a handbrake turn halfway through into a dark and foreboding re-imagining of what you have just heard, a minimal house conclusion that works by emphasising an alienated longing for something, anything.

After the partied excess of their last album In the Grace... feels reigned in, but in doing so I can't help but feel that The Rapture have tempered their creativity. Echoes felt packed with ideas and songs the band needed to get out. At times In the Grace of Your Love feels a little bit like that album cover - coasting along with little evidence of the effort that making this album must have taken, particularly given the tumultuous period the band have been through.

BP x

In the Grace of Your Love is out now on DFA, available from Amazon.co.uk on CD, LP and MP3 [affiliate links].

Album Review: Fabric 59 - Jamie Jones

Jamie Jones' album Don't You Remember The Future was reviewed on BlackPlastic.co.uk two years ago and it felt a bit like drinking Diet Coke when we'd rather go all out and fill our gut with The Real Thing. It's an accusation you could level at a fair number of contemporary artists but it's a fair one - who wants to settle for 'not quite as good as...'?

Jones' Fabric album is a bit of a surprise. Firstly because it isn't the fairly minimal tech I've come to expect from artists associated with Crosstown Rebels, the label Jamie calls home. But even more surprising is that fact that it is the most easy-going, celebratory Fabric albums in ages. But this isn't a thinking person's mix - the track listing is pretty obvious - but it's a great collection of disco and house cuts to soundtrack a party to.

There is a mixture of newer and older records on Fabric 59 but Jamie clearly isn't afraid to be obvious. There was a time when finding a new mix album without Felix Da Housecat on it would be more difficult than with. Despite that Jones drops 'Madame Hollywood', from Felix's defining Kittens and Thee Glitz LP, immediately before plunging into the reverb heavy 'Body Shiver' by Waifs & Strays. Thankfully it has been long enough since Felix mania that it just feels great to hear it again. Similarly Metronomy's mix Sebastien Tellier's 'La Ritournelle, shows up in the mix early on.

Fabric 59 is at its best in the closing third. Crazy P's 'Open For Service' is bonkers disco that feels every bit as classic as it aims to, with the most glamorously over the top chorus I've heard in ages. Holy Ghost's mix of 'Goblin City' by Panthers is the show stealer though. It's another track that has been around for an age but it never seems to have quite as much recognition as it deserves. If you haven't heard it you need to and it is here, at eight-minutes long, in pretty much full form. It melds house and disco like champagne and liquid gold, the inevitable guitar solo peak and subsequent break being one of the best things to feature on any Fabric album.

The pace is kept up through to the end. On Oppenheimer Analysis' 'The Devil's Dancers' Jones drops a track that harks back to times when the future sounded like the future rather than the past (just don't tell anyone it's only six years old). Soho808's 'Get Up Disco' is exactly as it says - a gorgeous loose rhythm and sparkling melody - and the stark 'Fear of Numbers' by Footprintz rounds things out.

Fabric 59 is almost in danger of being undermined - Jamie Jones has played it so obviously that it almost veers into parody, yet the final third of the album is so gorgeous I can't help but celebrate it.

BP x

Fabric 59 mixed by Jamie Jones is out now, available from Amazon.co.uk on CD and MP3 [affiliate links].