Author: Matt Oliver

Album Review: Le Le / ‘Party Time’ (Magnetron Music)

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★★★☆☆

Electro smooth-talkers from the Netherlands Le Le strut through their latest LP with a man bag’s worth of brightly colored, wafer-thin pop full of pout and pomade. Taking those words on board, those wanting entertainment should have a decent pinch of salt within arm’s reach. Amidst talk of playboy lifestyles, “Pearl Necklace” sounds like something Lonely Island would send viral, turning the sleaze and scandal of the 80s into a schoolboy’s joke. Electro super-freaks “Crazy Shaped Lady” and “Sexual Hair” aren’t far behind, and when switching to French language fancy from the collar-up school of cool, the kitsch value goes through the roof.

Preservation of the art as serious musicianship is done with a wily intelligence that makes the fun a bit more thought out and takes the tiers of style over substance, as laid bare on “Private Guy”, out of the situation. “Drunken Cigarettes” avoids parody with rapped verses and a bleary MGMT-ish hook that all hipsters will be making their next Facebook status or Twitter update, and the amusing “Scary Sweaters” helps make the perfect connection of sound and fashion. With the added mixing up of dream states and determination on “Damien” and pure pop of “Morning Drinks,” the realization is that Le Le — Faberyayo, Parra and Rimer London — are more than meets the eye and always easy on the ear.
File under: Chromeo, EIK, Light Asylum

Compilation Review: ‘In the City Vol. 2’ (Souvenir)

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★★★☆☆

The Souvenir sessions still come across like a deep house movement requiring a secret knock for you to gain entry. Like last year’s first installment, reviewed as “non-descript, with a sunken layer of tics and tricks,” ten tracks from label newcomers trundle away with the same self-effacing, gun barrel-straight, strict machine style, providing pointers for dance floor guidance and leaving the brain and limbs to reach an agreement.

Laila Tov could be draped over a piano as Sierra Sam gets things underway, a relative sweetener to what develops into a selection that’s heavy instead of heavy-going, and a little more progressive in character from the point of the stony CJ Jeff & Thodoris Triantafillou onwards. Emanuel Satie’s “No One Like You” is a chat-up line wrapped in bouncing bass and pretty unromantic application, kind of like saying, “I think you’re hot, here are my terms and conditions” — refer to Volume One again.

Satie comes again and counters with “Moonbounce,” the German getting funkier as he can feel daylight is somewhere close. A partier, kept strictly hush-hush. Not one for being told to keep it down is Kasbah Zoo’s “FAME,” a niggly acid hothead lapping up the darkness with moody sibling “Make Me Dance” following. As po-facedly smart as the first edition, adding a bit of passion to In the City Vol. 2 makes for even greater interest.
File under: Chris Wood, Tapesh &amp, Maximilijan, Denis Horvat

Album Review: Pig & Dan / ‘Decade’ (Soma)

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★★★★☆

Those seeking a reliably muggy, big-room sound in mint condition with ten years-plus mileage, need to sign up for the services of a pair who refuse to budge from Beatport placement. Igor Tchkotoua and Dan Duncan first flip you with phat-bassed grooves: so simple, yet so made to carve up you and your entourage. Pig & Dan will have you feeling the burn and loving it, until you’re racing toward water like a marathon runner.

“Breadrin Beats” begins the bass-pathed case of throwing down a gauntlet between house and techno, and “Amy” and “Lone Ranger” strike out with classy Morel-style sickness. All endorse a grimacing funkiness where bass cooks up dance floor lava until feet start to blister. In a weird converse, Pig & Dan project themselves as a small epicentre of ideas powerfully dominating a vast expanse, seemingly conserving their energy as they rinse out the tough stuff with very little exertion.

As contrary is that the duo probably comes under the minimalist category, while their crossfader fingers mingle in multiple pies. Thanks to their methodical full-bodied pitches, you’re getting a wide range of goodness: “Powder” begins with investigative movement, a hypnotic quiet tied up by the finale “The Nurse”; and appearances of sub-tribalism (“Insomnia”), tech/trance touches (“Doing It For Yourself,” “Natives”), and further toughening up (“Liberation”), means 2022 can’t come quick enough.
File under: Loco Dice, Spektre, Guy Gerber

Album Review: Shed / ‘The Killer’ (50 Weapons)

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★★★★☆

Calling his third album The Killer sounds unforgiving, but Shed seems such an inoffensive moniker, bordering on a random flick through the dictionary as way of choosing, that you wonder how much harm he can really do. It becomes a classic sucker punch in a program of techno guarantees that the majority seem ignorant of. Once you’ve bought into the callous from passive persona, Rene Pawlowitz’s main means of attack is nothing simpler than sounding louder than everyone else. Rocket science it most definitely ain’t, but Shed’s drums on “I Come By Night” and “Ride On” are some of the nastiest kicks and thwacks speakers will have forced upon them, rigging up a PA system for a prison of nightmares.

Two additional tactics make The Killer much more multipurpose than your average techno assassin. Ambient detoxes renounce the hammerings and break up the black-heartedness, either for Shed to wind up for his next attack, or to let listeners off the hook so they think the album is human after all. Naturally it’s for the former’s benefit. Tellingly, tempo changes are key; boring holes into skulls doesn’t belong exclusively to the 4×4 rhythm, with Shed flipping to two-step and irregular marches and kickbacks to disorientate your already mercy-pleading ears even further. Forty-five minutes that you’re unlikely to forget in a hurry.
File under: The Fear Ratio, Emptyset, The Traveller