Album Review: KNIIFE PRRTY - KNIIFE PRRTY

KNIIFE PRRTY's début conjures a mixture of musical influences, sounding like the Go Find performing Depeche Mode songs on a rainy day. Far from the raucous event their name infers, this is an album of slow contemplation and slightly emo American vocals.

It makes a couple of missteps - occasionally it simply doesn't sound distinctive enough, as on the opening tracks 'Neil Diamond' and 'Wretched Heart'. Steve Pahl's vocals don't really stand up to close scrutiny - sounding like Ben Gibbard but without the feeling the result is a little over-polished in places.

Things are better where the music gets more creative. The stuttering rhythms of 'Pins Down' with its snatched vocals sounds like it was captured by a computer and evolved in isolation from human involvement. 'Change Your Mind' succeeds despite the focus on the vocals because the slower pace better suits their maudlin, somewhat apathetic nature whilst juxtapositioning threatening vocals with a voice that sounds incapable of delivering a bad word.

When KNIIFE PRRTY stop wearing their influences on their sleeve is when thing get genuinely interesting. The spoken delivery of 'Morning Nausea' with it's slow, dubby backing sounds like an American take on Massive Attack.

KNIIFE PRRTY have delivered a début that intrigues in places but ultimately fails to sustain interest. If they leave the angst and instead focus on emotion they could be ones to watch.

BP x

Check out KNIIFE PRRTY on their MySpace.

Avaliable now on Amazon.co.uk on MP3 [affiliate link].

Album Review: Beacons of Ancestorship - Tortoise

Some years in the making, Tortoise's seventh album proper (and their first proper release in five years) kicks off with a certain swagger. 'High Class Slim Came Floatin' In' sounds like David Holmes at his best - timeless yet wearing contemporary inspiration loud and proud.

The rest of Beacons of Ancestorship maintains a similar vibe, giving the whole album a highly cinematic feel. There are the abstract, rhythmic noodlings of 'Gigantes', the tight funk of 'Northern Something' - every track feels like a soundtrack to a different film. It, much like the rest of Tortoise's catalogue, may initially feel difficult to penetrate but once you stop actively LISTENING you start to appreciate its spaces and spikey, angular left-turns.

Instrumental music tends to fall into two categories - that which suffers from a slight lack of emotion (minimal, techno) and that which boarders on melodramatic (Sigur Rós, trance music generally). Beacons of Ancestorship ultimately falls into the former category and that is a fact that will undoubtedly act as a barrier to anyone that hasn't experienced Tortoise's music before, but in focusing on the music itself Tortoise manage to capture more depth and texture than most.

Beacons of Ancestorship is an album of different vibes and moments. The smokey, moody last chance saloon of 'The Fall of Seven Diamonds Plus One' for example may take more work but the feelings it evokes clearly warrant the investment.

Hop in the car, roll down the window, stick this in the stereo and go on a roadtrip. Beacons of Ancestorship is a weird, twisted, dangerous adventure.

Beacons of Ancestorship is available now on Thrill Jockey.  Order from Amazon.co.uk on CD or LP [affiliate link].

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Album Review: Manners - Passion Pit

BlackPlastic has slept on this one a little - there has been a lot to cover but you generally know when we come back to something that has been out a while it is usually because it is worth it.

Manners is so up our street that if it was any more to our tastes it would be less living in our house, more peeking round the bedroom door trying to tempt us into a bit of nooky. An insatiably perky band, Passion Pit sound like Lo Fi Fnk force fed Coca-Cola with an added teaspoon of sugar once per minute until they could write a whole album. Much like Iceland's FM Belfast this is a band that mash together the sweetest elements of a few different bands - BlackPlastic is thinking the Spinto Band, Shout Out Louds and the Go! Team - and come out smelling of cotton candy.

Take 'Little Secrets' - with it's chorus of children singing it should by all rights be a disaster. Instead it is a glorious, awesome motivational cheer-leading anthem. 'The Reeling' is equaly glorious - like a first kiss, a holiday and a rollercoaster all in one - whilst 'Sleepyhead' sounds like the Avalanches trapped in a tropical snow globe.  That's a good thing.

And every single track here is like a beautiful day that sticks in your belly like a thorn because you know that you can't keep it up. Passion Pit may struggle to continue making music as joyful as that on Manners but BlackPlastic is sure looking forward to hearing them try.

It's simple really. Joyous electronic pop: In the words of Vin Diesel in xXx we live for this shit.

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

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Album Review: Lumina - The Rogue Element

Coming from the same school of thought as Simian Mobile Disco and Justice but without the pop hooks, Lumina is the aka Ben Medcalf's second album as Rogue Element and having had a listen it is difficult to understand why he isn't better known.

Lumina for the most delivers a noisy, bombastic, swinging-from-the-chandaliers style party and from the opening title track it sounds like the sound Simian Mobile Disco are aiming for with their second album. There a vicious stabs of acid and swirling synthesizers in a combination that defies easy categorisation. All BlackPlastic can say is that it has elements of techno and even trance but that it's still definitely house music.

Regardless of how you label it, this is music to lose memories to. 'Binary Suite', 'Sidewinder' and 'Lumina' are all full on brilliant technicolor brain-seizures. And when Lumina isn't swinging from the chandeliers things get even better - the broken beats of 'In Place' build to a distorted climax whilst 'Mistakes', the only track with a proper vocal, is the album's highlight. It's slower than the rest of the album but builds and builds into a magnificent electro-ballad, all snappy beats and distorted melodies.

Lumina is a triumphant record - an album that manages to be accessible without any danger of selling out. The golden boys of dance music just got some competition: The Rogue Element.

Lumina is released on 29 June on Exceptional.  Available to pre-order from Amazon.co.uk [affiliate link].

BP x

Album Review: Fabric 47 - Various mixed by Jay Haze

Fabric 47 crashes your party like a much cooler than you stranger. It has seen things you haven't seen and has layers you failed to anticipate.

This is a mix that demonstrates a clear disregard for genre, style or pigeon-hole. Jay Haze has created a sound that manages to bring together disparate styles in a fashion that feels totally natural with none of the sense of forced fun of a consciously eclectic mix. Starting with the jazzy opener 'Awakening', from Haze himself, the listener is taken through Lil Dirty Ghetto Bastard's paranoid tech-blues record 'An Hour to Fly' and onto Mike Dunn AKA Mr 69's hip-house 'Phreaky Motherfucker' in quick succession and, at three tracks in, it's unquestionably the most exciting start for a Fabric album in recent memory.

Jay Haze is known as a DJ, label owner (TuningSpork, Contexterrior and Future Dub) and artist (as himself and under the Fuckpony moniker) and BlackPlastic has to admit that until now none of his work had particularly resonated. It can be troubling when a label owner and prolific artist makes a mix - there is a danger they will focus too much on their own work and labels, creating a mix without variety. No danger of that here however - Haze's own tracks are all dramatically different in themselves and there is plenty of work from others here. This is a mix not intent to stay still - taking in techno, house, hip-hop, dub, blues and jazz in a wholly modern and exciting way.

It's without doubt one of the most creative Fabric albums in ages, the slow burning dub, hip-hop and jazz moments providing real flow and being handled sympathetically. Catrat's reggae tinged 'Freedom', remixed by Haze, slots into the mix wonderfully despite a dramatically lower BPM count. Similarly, The Last Poet's 'When The Revolution Comes' provides an angry counterweight for the album, riding on top the clicks and bleeps of Pheek's 'Soundscape'. Closing on the emotional, jazzy hip-hop of the exclusive cut 'Something To Say' by Rockey puts a beautiful full stop on the set - an honest explanation of what it is to love music and what it does and means to people.

Fabric 47 is so fresh it inevitably makes the rest of your record collection feel a little stale.

Fabric 47 is released on July 13 in the UK and August 11 in the US.  You can subscribe to the Fabric CD series at the FabricFirst website. It is worth noting that Haze is donating the fee from this mix to a charity currently working in the Democratic Republic of Congo - Merlin Health Services.

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