Album Review: Choral - Mountains

Mountains is Brendon Anderegg and Koen Holtkamp and Choral is their third album and marks a watershed as it is the first not to be released on their own Apestaartje label, but on Thrill Jockey. Ambient in nature, Choral takes it's cues from Eno and post-rock in an effort to create a serene, emotive sounscape that could be the soundtrack to a Alejandro González Iñárritu movie - it has that same feeling of chaos in slow motion.

And the understated, slow-moving sounds are beautiful.  What is perhaps more surprising however is that they pack an emotional punch and a degree of technical brilliance too.  It might be easy to make music to visit the spa to - all new age imagery incorporating the sounds of nature - but to aliken Choral to that would be to cheapen it.  The sparse us of guitar and the melodic patterns give the album a level of emotional gravitas that can be all to easy to lose in ambient music and the technical brilliance is obvious - much of Chorals was done using no overdubs and when they were used it was to add a larger, choral sound.  Sounds of nature have been incorporated - Telescope for example features the sounds of a thunder storm - but these have been utilised in a way that makes them simply another musical instrument that Mountains have at their disposal, the origin of the sound disguised behind layers of sound.

Relaxing, considered and defined by space, yes but boring never - Choral is a beautiful piece of work.  You can download an MP3 of the opening (title) track here (right click - save as).

BP x

Album Review: Merriweather Post Pavilion - Animal Collective

One of the best albums from recent years that has this far been totally overlooked by BlackPlastic.co.uk is Panda Bear's Person Pitch: a glorious Catalan summer daydream of an album. We were too late to consider a review with Person Pitch, but two wrongs a right does not make... now that Panda Bear is back doing his day job in Animal Collective we didn't want to let another great album pass without comment.

Merriweather Post Pavillion takes what Panda Bear learnt on his solo project - all afternoon sunshine, Beach Boys vocals and samples - and apply it to Animal Collective.

And the thick and fuzzy experimentation that ensues is glorious. From the psychedelic opener of In The Flowers through through to ridiculously joyful closer Brother Sport. Via the inspirational My Girls with its I Feel Love Your Love (you know what we meant) synth and anti-materialistic but big hearted and honest lyrics through the warbling bumblebee basslines, bursting bubbles and free falling in love sounds of Summertime Clothes.

Merriweather Post Pavillion sounds like days spent chasing beautiful girls in white dresses down sunbathed white-washed back alleys in southern Europe. It is the sound of a band simply having the bestest time, falling out of the melody tree and hitting every branch on the way down.

The soundtrack to the summer in January? It just might be.

BP x

Album Review: Tonight - Franz Ferdinand

Franz Ferdinand are a band haunted by their own success. Following a period as everyone's favourite new band their début just sold too damn well. It left a band continuously searching for relevance. In hind site maybe they should have split up and done something else but instead they made their difficult second album and here we are again - on their difficult third.

Tonight's history is lengthy already. Various producers' names were bandied about (Girls Aloud producer Xenomania or Erol Alkan anyone?) as were concepts (a pop reinvention or African rhythms... Very 2008) but these were ultimately abandoned. Tonight is therefore a fairly straight forward pedestrian record, there are a few synthesizers but otherwise it is very much business as usual.

But there are flashes of excellence when the formula is abandoned. Ulysses' stripped-back-pop complete with a wonky synthesized bassline, for example, or the thrash-indie-grunge breakdown of What She Came For (hold on, was that a guitar solo...?). Best of all is Lucid Dreams - a seven minute descent into electro that is somewhat reminiscent the crass version of LCD Soundsystem's Yeah. Indeed, in their review of Tonight The Guardian argued that an album full of the kind of dubby, electronc experimentation that makes up the closing portion of Tonight would have been much better.

And they'd be right. Which makes the fact that such an album exists even more bizarre. Pick up the limited release of Tonight on CD and it comes with a second disc called Blood, featuring a selection of dub versions of tracks from the album proper.

Blood sees eight of Tonight's 12 tracks getting a dark, dubby treatment and, on the whole, it's a good enough effort to not only meet but surpass the originals... As an album Blood certainly would have made more of a splash.

What She Came For, as a slow rock-trip-hop workout, becomes Feel The Pressure and the jerky acidic bassline sets the pace of the set nicely. Imagine what DFA produced Franz would sound like an you are halfway to the tweaking death dance of Die On The Floor and, best of all, The Vaguest of Feeling sounds like classic Joy Division. Based on Live Alone its minimal sound not only renders the original worthless... It just might be the best thing Franz Ferdinand have ever committed to record.

Franz Ferdinand have also reacted well to remixes, just check out the Morgan Geist mix of Take Me Out or Erol's take on Do You Want To?, but Blood delivers in spades... Easily enough to warrant a seperate release and it is a shame that the full treatment wasn't given to Tonight (except Lucid Dreams which is close enough already) and this released in its stead.

BP x

To buy on Amazon.co.uk click here.

Album Review: Cosmic Balearic Beats Vol. 1

We're in a bit of downtime at the moment as the release schedules have dried up a little but BlackPlastic thought, "Why not take a minute to talk about one we missed?"

Yes, it's another cosmic disco / Balearic compilation and yes, this one has an exceptionally dull title which is more befitting a Ministry of Sound show-me-the-dollars compilation. But: this one is from Eskimo and they just do it so much better than everyone else.

Cosmic Balearic Beats has been out since September and BlackPlastic is confident it would have truly shone in the dying weeks of an Indian summer yet even as the rain pisses down, drowning this foresaken island, this sounds great. Blended into a beautiful mix, each subtle shift in sound is glorious and the overall feeling is pure sunset on a beach.

There are highlights - Homerun's 'The Killer Storm', Spektrum's 'Fit Together' and 'Estrella' by Lullabies In The Dark - but it's not about these. Cosmic Balearic Beats Vol. 1 is all about the whole. Bad title, great album.

BP x

Album Review: Keeper's - Deastro

Push a button, turn a key, fire an engine. Stronger maybe but invincible, not. Less susceptible to weakness yet still caught off guard by glimpses of ghosts. Things may be fractured but with these principles and people on our side it'll take much more before anyone gives up. The individual calculations never mattered, it was the net effect that was important so as the acid burns the back of your throat remember: it. didn't. go. how. I. planned. it.

Seperate worlds but we're gonna make it.



This is what listening to Keeper's feels like. Keeper's is the début album from Deastro. It is shoe-gazing emo-chip-tune. My Bloody Valentine meets Postal Service. It's currently exclusive to eMusic.

BP x