Album Review: Kitsuné Maison Compilation 7 - Various Artists

If Kitsuné Maison 6 was the melodic one and 5 was Gold then this one may sadly go down as the phoned in one. It's true ladies and gents, the Maison series has jumped the shark.

It's hard to put your finger on but there is just a general lack of any sense of care and attention here. Maybe BlackPlastic has come to expect too much but, for the first time on a Kitsuné album, there is padding on the tracklisting.

Chateau Marmont's vocodered 'Beagle' is possibly the world's dullest 80s / French house hybrid - whoever picked this out of all the tracks in the world needs a slap. Similarly Renaissance Man's 'Rythym' seems content to deliver exactly 0.3 ideas across the length of the entire track. Worst of all is La Roux's return on Lifelike's mix of 'In For The Kill'. Fine, it's a catchy tune - we already admitted we liked it - and we know Kitsuné were there first, releasing 'Quicksand' last year. And Lifelike is ACE. But seriously - we all know La Roux isn't cool and will be over before her forth single.

However - when Kitsuné Maison Compilation 7 works, it really works. And it is on the laid back, sun drenched tracks this happens most. Two Door Cinema Club sound like Phoenix at the top of their game on 'Something Good Can Work' whilst Phoenix sound like, well, themselves at the top of their game on the blissful Classixx version of 'Lisztomania'. Even the Golden Filter almost manage to explain their hype on the slow and funky 'Favourite Things' whilst Autokratz finally deliver on the Yuksek mix of 'Always More'. The highlight though - Prins Thomas' mix of James Yuill's 'This Sweet Love' is not just good - it's a glorious summer's walk of a track, surpassing anything that's ever appeared on a Maison compilation in BlackPlastic's opinion.

Inconsistent then - some of the best tracks from the series combined with some of the worst. It's a shame - a little more QC and Kitsuné Maison 7 could have been the best yet.

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Album Review: FabricLive 46 - Various mixed by LTJ Bukem

Some background info: it has been some time since BlackPlastic last enjoyed any drum 'n' bass. A long time in fact. After the popularity of the Movement scene and a period of stellar tracks and artists around 2002 nothing quite felt right.

There just didn't seem to be anything new. Sure, there will be those that disagree but the truth is: DnB died in 2004.

LTJ Bukem's FabricLive mix doesn't really do anything new. So, in principle at least, there is nothing to see here. But... Golly, it is hard to turn your back on this disc. Flowing in through your speakers like the one that got away FabricLive 46 isn't just good - it's wonderful and undeniable. It's a reminder of what was so interesting about drum 'n' bass in the first time.

FabricLive 46 is summer barbecues, beers in the garden, dancing in the sunshine, killing time in the park and staying up all night to watch the sunrise. Maybe it helps that BlackPlastic is reminded of empty summers as a student when hearing this style of music but there are some wonderful feelings in the first half of this mix.

The sound itself is what you would expect if you are familiar with Bukem's work. His trademark 'intelligent' sound is combined with the some slightly harder, rolling bass lines (on the Madcap mix of Villem's 'Inflated Tear' for example) and there has been a lovely, warm development into a slightly more liquid DnB sound.

Admittedly things tail off a little in the latter third before coming back again for a nice climax in the filtered 'So In Need' by Syncopix. The album isn't perfect by any stretch and it still fails to match the heights of the early Movement mix albums or the superb Soulful Behaviour mix from Defunct. One thing is for sure however - this is the best drum n bass mix Fabric have released in years... Bring on the summer.

FabricLive 46: LTJ Bukem is released to Fabric First members on 1 June and goes on general release on 15 June.  Subscribe to Fabric First at the Fabric London website.

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Album Review: Ciao! - Tiga

There is a lot of talk at present of an electroclash resurgence. A second wave. With new albums from DJ Hell, Kittin & The Hacker and Peaches it is perhaps easy to see why. What is strange though is that many of these acts have distanced themselves from this sound already - Miss Kittin's rather good I Com was a move into a purer techno sound and whilst the follow up Bat Box may have been a misguided move into goth it the techno sound of the former disc she is known for as a DJ. Hell's last album, NY Muscle, was an attempt to distance himself from the obvious trappings of the electroclash genre and Tiga's debut wasn't remotely close to electroclash anyway. The only track Tiga has done that could be labelled as such is his collaboration with Zyntherius on their cover of 'Sunglasses At Night'.

What's more it seems that some semi-amateur hacks (and BlackPlastic puts themselves into the category) seem content with using the 'resurgence of electroclash' as a tool to beat up on Tiga specifically. In their recent review of Peaches I Like Cream Fact magazine said Tiga's comeback was best off ignored.

Which is total, complete, pathetic horseshit. Horseshit because it reeks of lazy sideswiping - an off the cuff comment to pad a two paragraph review. So here's the deal: Tiga's debut, Sexor, was a great record. And Ciao! is better.

To call Ciao! electroclash is to exposure yourself as a knowledge-less pretender to the whole world. This isn't electroclash, it's definitely closer to techno than that. What's more it has ideas and songs and the production is always spotless.

Every track, whether it is the quirky and hard 'Mind Dimension', a revision of Tiga's own 'Move Your Body' but much better, or the anthemic tears-on-the-danefloor closer 'Love Don't Dance Here Anymore', delivers something a little different. The production work of a team consisting of Soulwax, James Murphy, Gozales, Jesper Dahlbäck and Jori Hulkkonen shines through but Tiga still makes this all his own.

How does it compare to Sexor? There's no contest. Ciao! is a noisier, more assertive album. 'What You Need' is grinding and distorted to the sassy quirkiness of 'Shoes'. There are also several house ballads - 'Turn The Night On' and 'Speak, Memory' for example - that manage to actually deliver. Ciao! Is an album with both more variety and consistency than Sexor.

Ciao! may not be redefining genres.  It may not be confounding expectations or giving wannabe hoxtonites something new no-one has heard of. But what it does do is consistently deliver ideas and deliver them well. If you are would rather snigger at the back because Tiga isn't the fashionable wünderkid he was once then so be it - BlackPlastic will be on the dancefloor having more fun.

Available now from Amazon.co.uk on CD , LP  and MP3 .

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Album Review: Begone Dull Care - Junior Boys

Junior Boys: the auditory equivalent of perfection through design. A Junior Boys record feels like slipping on a perfect new jacket, firing up a sports car in the show room, turning on that pristine new MacBook Pro.

They have always had that feeling and, in all likelihood, probably always will. Above all Junior Boys produce shimmering 80s influenced pop music and Begone Dull Care does not meddle with this formula. If you didn't like either of the first two albums then you are unlikely to like this.  If you have accused their sound of being over-produced then you still will.

Having said which, if you don't like either of the first two albums then BlackPlastic has concerns for your ability to judge anyway.

Begone Dull Care is more of the same in the best possible way - it takes what was great and refines it. It is a more positive, slightly more upbeat affair, and more than ever this feels like a duo in mastery of their sound. By focusing on just eight tracks here it truly sounds like an album where every single beat, bleep and vocal has been obsessed over.

The whole thing is very beautiful, with the kind of rarified sound BlackPlastic would expect from a Blue Nile release or something similar, where years have been poured into each song. The shimmering pop feels fare to cared for to be 'just' another album.

If BlackPlastic were mean it would suggest that, maybe, a little live instrumentation could have made this great album classic. Just listen to what a touch of trumpet did on closing track 'Lullaby' from Morgan Geist's Double Night Time last year.

BlackPlastic isn't feeling mean however so we simply say: some music dulls with repeated listens. Like a child force fed cotton candy: the novelty wears off. Other albums reward the listener for making repeated visits, growing, maturing with age. Begone Dull Care falls into the latter case. Get it now because when you play this in ten years it will sound so much better for the memories it will then hold.

Available at Amazon.co.uk on CD and LP .

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Album Review: Smoke the Monster Out - Damian Lazarus

Having started the label Crosstown Rebels and produced some of the best mix albums in recent memory the concept of an artist album from Damian Lazarus was an interesting one. Usually you would have an idea of what to expect from a DJ or an artist album by checking their own productions but in Lazarus' case, in BlackPlastic's knowledge at least, there were no tracks produced by him released prior to this album.

Anyone who has heard lead single 'Moment' will know exactly what to expect. And that's the unexpected... Because Smoke the Monster Out is a musical journey about as far from the dancefloor as anything Get Physical have released previously. Out not long after Bronnt Industries Kapital recent Hard For Justice it shows the label to be much more creative and less risk averse than BlackPlastic would have previously thought.

'Moment' is not a dance track so much as a brain seizure. With a piano intro and a melodic vocal, presumably Lazarus himself, it starts off like the delicate ramblings of a Spiritualized or Lou Reed track before descending into a dubby cacophony of snatched vocals and bass. The album's main guest vocalists, the Sweidsh twins from Taxi Taxi, repeat Lazarus' opening line over time-stretched versions of themselves. It sounds Lazarus not giving a damn about where he came from and, frankly, it's a breath of fresh air. It's inventive in a totally unexpected way. Acting as a counter-weight to 'Moment' is Lazarus' cover of Scott Walker's 'It's Raining Today', an epic ballad positioned one track away from the album's close as if to mirror the position of 'Moment', one track separated from the album's opening.

Some tracks are (a little) more straight up - 'Memory Box' is less good, but it's cockney-yob minimal is more what you would expect of this album. At the same time there are curiosities in different forms, with 'Diamond In The Dark' being one - a duet of computer synthesized vocals combined with Lazarus' own over a gentle backing. 'Neverending' is different again, a celebratory stomp of a dance pop record.

Smoke the Monster Out may occasionally backfire in its attempts to be different but on the whole it is a total success. Not since Joakim's equally bonkers Monsters & Silly Songs has an album captured so many ideas in one place whilst simultaneously confounding all ideas of what a dance album should consist of.

Smoke the Monster Out's greatest achievement is that it sounds cohesive despite taking a inconsistent approach. The moods and ideas are fractured but there is an overriding dub-drenched paranoia that weaves its way through the whole thing.

Available on at Amazon.co.uk on CD , LP and MP3 .

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