Album Review: Innerspeaker - Tame Impala

2010 feels like it has been the year of the grower... Many of BlackPlastic's favourite records from the past twelve months have been those that hold something back, saving greatness for those that persevere.

We have already covered Flying Lotus' Cosmogramma but you can now add Tame Impala's Innerspeaker to this list.

Not instantly picked up on by many and certainly not as celebrated as it should be, Tame Impala's debut of spiralling prog-rock and thick, chunky bass lines sounds unlike anything else you will hear this year. Innerspeaker is like a trip through all of the best parts of seventies rock but with the added benefit of hindsight. The record is tightly wound into a cohesive whole that feels like one monster trip. Sure, it's retro, but unashamedly so and with a focus on production that sparkles and song-writing that feels timeless.

The closest thing to Tame Impala would be the introspective experimentation of the Flaming Lips combined with the shining bombast of Secret Machines. No bad thing in itself, and yet the band bring their own style, an added layer of psychedelia that is hard to resist.

If you have read anything about Tame Impala it probably mentioned 'Why Won't You Make Up You Mind' - a stand out track on an album that feels like a proper album to the point where individual highlights are difficult to pick out. And 'Why Don't You Make Up Your Mind' is undeniably great, awash as it is in harmonious vocals layered atop crying guitars that pan from left to right to left - only prog-rock can get off so much on the concept of stereo.

But to focus on 'Why Won't You Make Up Your Mind' is to miss much. There is the rapid thrill of 'Desire Be Desire Go', 'Alter Ego' with its looping drum section and acid soaked guitars that give way to a delicate bridge section and the Jurassic sized bass of 'The Bold Arrow of Time' for starters. Probably best of all in BlackPlastic's opinion however would be album opener 'It Is Not Meant To Be'. A ballad for the pessimist it opens proceedings in a wave of radio static before the drums crash in sounding like a prog take on A Tribe Called Quest's thrilling 'Scenario'. The result is wonderful. Singer Kevin Parker's vocals sound resigned in the best possible way -  stoned, smitten and content to be even classed as in the race.

Innerspeaker is another one of those records you can't help but come back to. Each further listen feels like scratching away another layer of the silver crap that coats lottery scratch cards and you never quite know what else might lie beneath. Epic.

BP x

Innerspeaker is out now on Modular, available from Amazon.co.uk on CD, LP and MP3 [affiliate links].

Album Review: From The Cradle To The Rave - Shit Robot

BlackPlastic has appreciated the work of Shit Robot since their track 'Wrong Galaxy' appeared on Radio Slave's rather excellent Creature Of The Night compilation back in 2007.

Back then 'Wrong Galaxy' felt like a breath of fresh air - proper techno done properly at a time when dance music was obsessed with being anything it wasn't. Electroclash, post-punk, rock music - all were greatly incorporated into tracks that worked on the dance floor, but sometimes less is more. And in essence From The Cradle To The Rave delivers on the promise of that first single.

Notably absent though it may be, 'Wrong Galaxy' is a demonstration of Shit Robot alter-ego Marcus Lambkin's approach to music. And so when album opener 'Tuff Enuff' turns up with it's functional, driving bass line, spoken vocals and minimal synth washes it is clear that this album will leave you wanting more, not less.

There are a couple of moments that may fail to live up to the heights that Shit Robot can sometimes achieve - 'I Found Love' feels unnecessary, particularly compared to the imagination demonstrated on previous singles 'I Gotta Feeling' or the dizzying 'Simple Things (Work It Out)'.

'Simple Things' itself remains the best thing Shit Robot have released - a track so perfectly formed that it simply never gets old, the perfect combination of classic techno and house where the real innovation comes from nothing but the bloody-minded quality of the thing.

The Alexis Taylor guest spot on 'Losing My Patience' is great and 'Take 'Em Up', featuring Nancy Whang, is even better - a slick slice of eighties-pop sheen. Things round out with previous single 'Triumph!!!' and frankly it's an appropriate name and an appropriate conclusion.

Cradle To The Rave succeeds because it is so focused - compared to much of DFA's output this is remarkably straight forward house music, but it is all the better for that fact.

BP x

From The Cradle To The Rave is out now on DFA, available from Amazon.co.uk on CD, LP and MP3 [affiliate links].

Album Review: Infinite Love - Dustin Wong

Sometimes you eat the bear, and sometimes, well, he eats you. Or so says the stranger to the Dude in the Coen Brother's rather majestic The Big Lebowski.

In other words, life is bittersweet and full of surprises. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Dustin Wong's Infinite Love feels like an album built for the days you win and the days you lose.

A concept album that calls to mind the Magnetic Fields' 69 Love Songs in reverse, Infinite Love is actually two albums. Or perhaps the same album twice. Both start the same but they diverge halfway through, giving the listener a choice of experiences. Each version of the album consists of 15 un-named 'tracks' but each of these blends into the next and are purely for navigation. Ultimately this is one piece of music, just in two versions, the 'Brother' version and the 'Sister' version.

With a continuous, instrumental approach it almost feels ambient. But it is actually pretty much all warmly strummed rhythm guitar music. Imagine if Here-Come-The-Warm-Jets-Eno bumped into Music-For-Airports-Eno and you would be halfway there. It should be impenetrable, pretentious and dull but it is anything but.

Infinite Love is a heart-warming victory lap. Dustin Wong was inspired by orchestral music on this album and it shows in the ambition and use of space - this is as exciting and experimental an album as you could expect.

BP x

Infinite Love is out now on Thrill Jockey, available from Amazon.co.uk on CD+DVD and LP+DVD [affiliate links].

Album Review: How To Skin A Ghost - Gypsy Death Star

If Hurts are like a bunch of eighties boy band wannabe losers - more Savage Garden than Tears For Fears - then Gypsy Death Star is the real deal. The alter ego of Wyatt Hull and Cesar Augusto, Gypsy Death Star's sound is somewhere between eighties new romanticism and modern IDM. Album opener 'Throwing Hail Marys' buzzes and sparks with throbbing bass and atmospherics. 'Wax & Wane' turns up twice, once in the form of a slow, ominous ambient piece on the 'WarriorMix' and again, closing the album as the 'Original ix', this time with more of a beat, if only just. 'Heavenly Asylum' is distorted and fractured with a fuzzy melody that veers close to sounding 8bit. The highlight has to be 'Shake Down', with its distorted guitar picking its way through the intro before the manipulated vocals insist on telling us just how bloody lovely and adorable we are. By the chorus serenade, complete with a lovely 'everybody join-in' "ooh oooooh" bit, it is a wonder the subject of the song was clearly such a bitch. Because if this is anything to go by Gypsy Death Star must be pretty lovely. And it only works because this unashamedly 'pop' moment stands in isolation on what is otherwise a short and relatively reserved album. How To Skin A Ghost feels very much like an introduction rather than the realisation of all of Gypsy Death Star's ideas and for that we should be grateful. BP x How To Skin A Ghost is out now on Earth Delivery Records, available from Amazon.co.uk on MP3 [affiliate link]. For more information on Gypsy Death Star visit the official site.

Album Review: Black City - Matthew Dear

Sometimes Matthew Dear makes glitch. Sometimes he makes techno. Sometimes he just makes insanity. And increasingly he appears to be favouring the latter.

Sometimes Matthew Dear makes glitch. Sometimes he makes techno. Sometimes he just makes insanity. And increasingly he appears to be favouring the latter.

Following up on his first two albums, Leave Luck to Heaven and Backstroke, Asa Breed was a startling revelation. As much pop as dance, in places tender and wounded and in others aloof and lyrically impenetrable. And since BlackPlastic is ultimately often fond of music that requires a bit of thought, it was one of those albums that we kept coming back to.

Black City is as the title implies - a dark journey through a nighttime urban sprawl inside Dear's mind. It's a darker affair that culminates in the sordid workout of album centrepiece and highlight, the fantastically titled 'You Put A Smell On Me'. Dear's vocals are hardly robust but when he tweaks them in the right way, as he does here - "I'm gonna try you on, and exercise" - he nails his 'thing' somewhere south of sub-zero on the cool wall.

So if you hadn't already guessed, Black City is at times a touch sordid. Whilst nothing touches the mechanical sleazy genius of 'You Put A Smell On Me' in terms of pure filth there is a vibe of sex and alienation that runs throughout the album. 'I Can't Feel' sounds like serial copulation carried out in in a bid to feel something, anything, and as the album progresses the it feels increasingly like a commentary on the instant-gratification-based but veil-thin nature of modern society.

Album closer 'Gem' really nails it, revealing Dear's apparent confusion and isolation. Over a ballad, the vocals are a modest and understated cry for help and attention:

All of my sad songs can't make you change,

They'll just keep pushing you further away.

One of your great regrets will be staying in place,

I can't hold you back from your dreams.

When you figure out what's real I'll be standing here,

A little bit older but forgiving as the night of the day.

In today's modern world it's difficult not to feel a certain empathy with Dear's confusion. Black City not only builds on what Asa Breed achieved - it establishes Dear as a song writer up there with some of the best. This is music to make you dance, think and feel.

BP x

Black City is out now on Ghostly International, available from Amazon.co.uk on CD, LP and MP3 [affiliate links].