Album Review: Fin - John Talabot

Image source: Red Bull Music AcademyFollowing on from my write-up on Cloud Atlas' Attack On Nothing earlier this week I couldn't let John Talabot's Fin pass by without comment.

I'd not previously heard of Talabot before a month or so back when the press for Fin started rolling in. After a brief listen on Spotify I knew this was an album I needed to own.

Fin feels like a commentary on electronic music itself. Whilst portions of dance music twist themselves into an ever tighter rubber band ball trying to define exactly what contemporary dubstep 'means' to nine decimal points here is an album that feels like a broad snapshot of the past twenty-five years taken through the lens of a brand new high-definition camera. There are moments that recall early-nineties dance, eighties electro and noughties minimal but it does so in a way that feels utterly consistent. In a sense this is an album of no style, not in terms of lacking stylistic sense (definitely not) but in that it has no genres tied to it at all.

It also captures subtleties of human emotion - 'Oro y Sangre' is all moody blues without ever uttering a word whilst 'Journeys', featuring Etkhi on vocals, feels like sunny expeditions through tropical islands. Opener 'Dapak Ine' has paranoia before emerging butterfly like halfway through with a key change that casts off the worry as easily as swallowing a pill. The latter takes all the texture and detail of minimal techno and applies it to an instrumental that manages to come off as accessible - Ricardo Villalobos with a hook you can remember, basically. This is clearly the work of someone who really knows what they are doing.

As things move towards the end of the album you can't help but feel the warmth of Talabot's hometown Barcelona pulse through this record. These are themes for losing yourself too. 'When The Past Was Present' aptly captures the cynicism-free optimism of rave and packages it up into something that means you can almost feel yourself getting lost on the dance floor for the first time all over again - it's like Talabot set out to re-create Moby's 'Go' and somehow made a classic even better.

Closing on 'So Will Be Now', bouncing beats, handclaps and bruised vocal chants Fin feels appropriately like a climatic full stop - the end of the beginning. Debut records that are well realised are rare - even more impressive is that this one does so much whilst relying on so little in the way of genre or contemporaries.

Fin is out now, available from Amazon.co.uk on CD, LP and MP3 [affiliate links]; stream now on Spotify.

Album Review: Attack On Memory - Cloud Nothings

Source: MTVHiveI'm circling back around this week to touch on a couple of releases from this year that I already managed to miss at the time. First up is Cleveland four-piece Cloud Nothings' third album Attack On Memory. I don't cover much straight up rock music on the blog because not much of it captures my attention - occasionally something does however and this is just such a case.

The cover of Attack On Memory depicts a black and white out of focus lighthouse. Cloud Nothings make mildly scuzzy music, the sound of a lo-fi rock band slipping down the back of a radiator and taking a bit of grunge with them before rolling into a furry bit of punk. That cover fits perfectly - slightly out of time, blurred and messy, yet beautiful and still trying to point the way. And that raw sound just makes this band all the more exciting, the lack of polish shining through brightly on Steve Albini's lassé faire production.

Opening with a melodic piano on 'No Future/No Past' is a good example of one of the two apparent halves of Cloud Nothings' new darker sound - less quiet-loud-quiet, more just quiet-quiet-quiet-loud-loud-louder as the song slowly stumbles towards an aggressively climatic staggering punch-out, drummer Jayson Gercyz's kicks punctuating vocalist Dylan Baldi's wails.

It's a fantastic start and as if to prove a point they go and do it again, one more time with feeling. 'Wasted Days' starts as a freewheeling wrangle, arms-a-windmilling, looking for a fight before entering a taught, paranoid instrumental middle section only to come out fighting once more, Baldi hurling dissatisfied barbs that result in a screamed onslaught: "I thought, I would, be more, than this".

Just when it feels like there is only one way to go Cloud Nothings reel things back in, showing a lighter side. Both 'Fall In' and 'Stay Useless' feel, musically speaking, like hopelessly loveable romantics - the latter's guitars, drums and bass all locking into melodic interplay before an unsympathetically unrefined chorus in tribute to apathy.

The second half of the album can't quite maintain such a pace, but few albums could. 'Our Plans' rumbles away, a disintegrating band playing away, gradually getting noisier and less in control like a musical take on Chinese whispers. Attack On Memory closes with its musically most straight forward song, needy punk longing ending things on a lyrically confessional note of masochism and love.

34 minutes and you are done, but Attack On Memory is a wonderful record that shows subtlety, aggression and creativity.

Attack on Nothing is out now, available from Amazon.co.uk on CD, LP and MP3 [affiliate links].

Album Review: Johnny D Presents Disco Jamms Volume One - Various Artists

Johnny D's Disco Jamms is a rapid fire disco assault that manages to cram in 18 classic disco tracks from across the years into an extravagant 77-minute long celebration.

And basically it's brilliant. The mixing may be a little rudimentary, but that was the way things were back in the days of disco anyway and this set really doesn't suffer as a result. The selection of music on offer shows that at its best disco can be glorious. It's a genre that still gets a bad rep in certain quarters, not helped by the fancy dress theme parties and some overly commercialised artists that rode the sound all the way to the bank whilst simultaneously leaving the true spirit behind. For the record I truly believe the Bee Gees and Abba are two or the worst acts to grace the planet. Ever.

But there is nothing of that insipid shiny thin pop here. Cerrone's beautiful 'Look For Love' has a warm shimmering chorus that rides a rainbow unicorn to a string backing before a full two-minute percussive break. It's inventive and extravagant and soulful and real and ridiculous all at the same time. As disco retrospectives go this one isn't in the least bit precious either, so sure, you'd got the O'Jays, but you also have Klein & MBO's electro masterpiece 'Dirty Talk' followed by the large bassline heavy 'For The Same Man' by B-Beat Girls. There are moments of glorious electronic disco from the eighties that run away with my heart here. The System's 'It's Passion' is glossy funk with a fantastic spoken word jogging-on-the-spot synth heavy bridge combined with a simply massive chorus.

Most of all though disco was always about getting on up and over - triumph in the face of adversity, less showing off, more celebrating what you should to be thankful for. And that is what comes through on this album, whether on the enthused 'We're On The Right Track' by Ultra High Frequency or Lafleur's instrumental 'Dub Till We Drop'.

Don't fight it, feel it.

Johnny D Presents Disco Jamms Volume One is released on BBE on 5 March, available to pre-order from Amazon.co.uk on CD and MP3 [affiliate links].

Album Review: Future Disco Vol. 5: Downtown Express - Various

Last year's Future Disco 4 turned out to be one of the better mix albums I heard last year. Despite coming fairly late in an ongoing series it had a really strong sense of identity and multiple classic tunes. Future Disco Vol. 5 follows the mantra of if it ain't broke, don't fix it... What you have is another collection of contemporary house tracks from the current batch of hot new things, this time packages up under the subtitle Downtown Express.

So we have another winner then, right? Sort of. The problem here is two-fold:

Firstly this doesn't have any disco. Where as volume 4 had Kaine's 'Love Saves The Day' and 'Zombie Tropicana' - classic soul vocals and experimental eclecticism that encapsulated some of the original spirit of disco this latest release really just feels like a collection of recent house releases. Because of that fact there just isn't any noticeable identity.

Secondly and more importantly the quality just ain't as high. There are a few good standout tracks but nowhere near the same caliber as on the previous release.

So if it isn't exactly a killer release or a highwater-mark for the series then what is it? Mostly just a collection of decent tunes - good but unlikely to blow you away. Miguel Campbell's 'Something Special' is a case in point - it's a nice minimal but bouncy house track but nowhere near as good as his MAM collaboration I recently reviewed, which would have been a much more 'disco' choice.

There are still a few good moments, they just aren't quite as consistently essential as volume 4's best tracks were. Tensnake once again deliver the business on Tiger & Woods filtered mix of 'Need Your Lovin' and the Pitto instrumental version of T J Kong & Nuno Dos Santos' 'Something Happened' is a great tense piece of tech-house funk. Benoit & Sergio's 'Principles' is still excellent, as Benoit & Sergio frankly always are and Maceo Plex's mix of DJ T.'s 'City Life' shows once again that no-one makes techno influenced sunshine house as well as Maceo Plex.

The album only really starts to deliver as it closes though. Joakim's 'Find A Way' is given a beautiful remix by Soul Clap - aptly entitled the Soul Clap Floating remix the result is a deliriously contemplative loved-up sensation that captures the introspective coming-of-age feeling the Joakim album from which it is lifted attempted to capture in the first place. It just might be Soul Clap's finest remix to date. Similarly the Prince Language mix of Penguin Prison's rather formulaic pop house track 'Multi Millionaire' transforms the original into a suitably climatic old Chicago house tribute.

It's a shame things don't start quite as well as they finish.

Future Disco Vol. 5 is out on February 27 on Need Want, available for pre-order from Amazon.co.uk on CD and MP3 [affiliate links].

Album Review: Dreams Say, View, Create, Shadow Leads - Dustin Wong

Dustin Wong - Diagonally Talking Echo from Thrill Jockey Records on Vimeo.

Dustin Wong's first solo album Infinite Love was both weird and wonderful, coming out of left field to create a bizarre concept album based around his experimental instrumental guitar work. As a double album it seemed like it would be a daunting listen but it turned out to be anything but. This follow up is shorter and therefore a little more approachable... But in reigning in the scope has it lost some of the magic?

Basically the answer is no. The shorter duration makes the album feel more focused and yet it actually feels more experimental. The music strays into more processed, fractured and electronic sounds and at times it all creates a staggering collage of noise unlike anything you have heard.

The beauty of Wong's sound is in the rhythmic warmth of it all. Each song typically consists of a passage or two that begins simply but gradually builds and layers into a more and more complex piece of music, transforming itself from something delicate and quiet to a far more triumphant conclusion. This is actually the result of Wong's recording process, which involves using pedals to loop elements throughout the song. It means the songs innevitably get increasingly complex as they progress. In fact Wong apparently recorded much this album live, using just a few overdubs to move sounds through the stereo field. The result is a dizzy mix of Eastern-influenced post-rock and folk.

Dreams Say... has some spellbinding moments and it stands up to Wong's previous solo album. It is interesting to hear his ideas gradually evolve and transform his music, often over the course of a single song, and it is this organic growth that makes his music appealing. Despite a shorter duration, I can't help but feel there is still a little too much here to not feel a bit overwhelmed. And yet the best bits shine enough that it is worth persevering. Wong's dreams are complex, overwhelming and at times beautifully uplifting - and well worth listening to.

Dreams Say, View, Create, Shadow Leads is out on 20 February on Thrill Jockey, available to pre-order on Amazon.co.uk on CD [affiliate link].