Album Review: Godforsaken Roads - Black Strobe

A lot has changed since Black Strobe's 2007 debut album, Burn Your Own Church. Even back then it felt like Arnaud Rebotini's album was a hangover from a musical moment already passed. Back when Black Strobe was a duo - Rebotini joined then by DJ Ivan Smagghe - they were briefly regarded as one of electronic music's most promising acts.

That debut album took too long to surface however, and innevitably felt like it had missed a beat... Yet single Like A Man, a cover of the Bo Diddley record, hinted at a possible evolution in style however, wild-eyed and psychotic paranoid and sunburnt country for the 21st century. It was a little at odds with the gothic surrealism of the rest of Burn Your Own Church yet by far its most intriguing moment.

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Godforsaken Roads - Black Strobe

Godforsaken Roads seemingly takes that moment as its jumping off point. Opener Broken Phone Blues puts music to that horrible post-night-out moment of waking up to a broken phone and a blank memory. It is at least be partially tongue-in-cheek but Black Strobe play it straight, a psychotic hillbilly synth pop stomp of a record all the more sublime for its ridiculousness. The vocal hook that makes the chorus catchy as hell is bound to be lodged firmly in your head by the time a sleazy guitar solo kicks in two-thirds through.

Like A Man was known by many for its appearance in Guy Ritchie movie RocknRolla and the trailer of Tarantino's Django Unchained - and you have to wonder if Rebotini took that to heart. This is an album that feels like it has been created for those cinematic moments in films where characters lose their shit. Monkey Glands is based around a manic riff that travels up and down the fret board like a switchblade across your throat and on He Keeps On Calling Me we get a slow and bluesy semi-drunk sounding justification for bad behaviour. There is a track here called For Those Who Came On Earth Thru The Devil Asshole - you probably get the point.

There is also a cover version of Johnny Cash's seminal classic Folsom Prison Blues. Whilst it doesn't match the understated vitriolic anger of the original it certainly sits at home amongst Godforsaken Roads' themes of alienation, anger and human darkness. There ain't much treated sacred on this album, and so it is unsurprising that one of Cash's best known records was considered fair game.

It's a fun ride on these Godforsaken Roads, and it is at its best when it isn't being overly complicated. From The Gutter's throbbing synth bassline and guitar and vocal interplay are a prime example - it is straight for the jugular and uncompromising where in comparison elsewhere Swamp Fever's melodic country feels like a diversion. This is an album either a third two long or 50% short of ideas, but when it wants to it can take you out on the dancefloor and show you a rollicking good time all the same. Just make sure it doesn't smash you over the head with a beer bottle and make off with your phone and wallet afterwards.

Godforsaken Roads is out now on Black Strobe Records, available on CD, LP or MP3 from Amazon.co.uk [affiliate links]. Listen via Spotify below:

Album Review: Music Components - Rebotini

It's nearing Christmas, a time when BlackPlastic has to go digging a little harder through the racks than normal as the release schedule dries up.

The benefit of such dry spells is that they sometimes lead to you finding something a little different, like a copy of Rebotini's Music Components which BlackPlastic came across in Toulouse recently. Rebotini is part of Black Strobe, a group that (once they went their separate ways with Ivan Smagghe) seemed to lose all sense of what made them fantastic and so turned into a goth techno band as an outlet. Their début album, Burn Your Own Church, was not without charms but wasn't want people wants particularly either. Music Components, in some ways at least, goes back and delivers on the original promise.

This is an album of musical constructions produced using a selection of classic synthesizers. It's entirely instrumental, filmic in nature and jet black. An in that sense, it is a better realization of Black Strobe's promise that Black Strobe themselves are. The snide vocals of a 'Me and Madonna' would have been great but the throbbing electronics here are enough to deliver.

This isn't an album that needs much to be said - if you liked 'Inner Strings' and the thought of an album's worth doesn't sound boring then this is worth seeking out.

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