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BONOBO THE NORTH BORDERS Ninja Tune
JAVELIN HI BEAMS Luaka Bop
16/20
9/20
There is a pervasive myth about Bonobo – that he is a ‘slow burner’, an artist that the world has taken a while to warm to. But there’s a more prosaic explanation for why he has enjoyed greater critical acclaim later in his career: his albums have got progressively better. Black Sands showed a deeper, sharper and more confident style of production, and on The North Borders Bonobo’s progression has accelerated further still. Catchy, non-threatening and melodic enough to soundtrack a dinner party, yet layered with enough ideas and rhythmic, electronic soul to sustain much closer examination – that’s a hard trick to pull off. From the yearning opener First Fires, to the understated but majestic Cirrus, to the lolloping chimes of Ten Tigers, this is the sound of a man hitting his stride. And as much as Bonobo’s artistry has developed, the musical landscape has changed around him. With the sun long since set on the chillout genre, there’s no danger of a man in wraparound sunglasses enthusing about Bonobo soundtracking a hackneyed moment he never actually had in a beachside bar. These days, you’d file Bonobo next to the shimmying, punctuated flow of SBTRKT, or the lilting, percussive house of Falty DL – and that’s
Oh, electronic indie pop, will you ever hold a place in our hearts? There are so many bands that sound like Javelin already populating the charts and – we can only imagine – countless seedy New York dive bars, and if it weren’t for their sound being at least five years out of date they might actually be the best band in Brooklyn. The fact remains: it is and they’re not. Brooklyn counterparts French Horn Rebellion sound virtually the same as Javelin, albeit slightly less swirly, and Glassjaw’s Daryl Palumbo pulled out a surprisingly wonderful disco sleaze record (and a shitty, generally ignored college rock effort) with his band Head Automatica many, many moons ago. So, why this? Why now? Certain points of the album, notably Friending Revised, are catchy and fun, and these guys obviously know how to put a great tune together, but what can you really say about a band like Javelin in 2013? Ultimately, they’re just not that exciting. Hi Beams essentially feels like a bit of a waste of musicianship, to be placed firmly in your “will not remember in five years,” pile. BB
exactly the kind of top class company he deserves. AC
THE KNIFE SHAKING THE HABITUAL Brille
OUTER LIMITS RECORDINGS SINGLES, DEMOS AND RARITIES (2007-2010) Weird World
16/20
15/20
Despite the corrosive calypso of songs like Heartbeats or the seriously-goofy, goofilyserious vocal intonations on We Share Our Mother’s Health, the veneer of good times that glossed over previous Knife records was always just that; a thin layer of surface-level fun that masked the output of a group who made serious music that demanded deep and nuanced listening. On Shaking the Habitual Karin Dreijer Andersson and Olof Dreijer have produced a suite of songs that defy immediate categorisation. It eschews the perky electropop of Deep Cuts and the minimal clatter of Silent Shout, preferring nods to the primal ooze of US noise, free-improv jazz, stereo-scraping field recordings and gauzy ambient shiver. It’s certainly an ambitious record. Andersson’s vocals root the listener in a recognisably Knife-y context even when sparring with Africanesque polyrhythmic clanking (A Tooth for an Eye), propulsive rolling drums and reverberating clicks that melt into rotting post-rave arpeggios (Full of Fire) or the kind of sonically-swollen ambient-tundra that Tim Hecker’s stalked out as his own over recent years (Old Dreams Waiting to be Realized). It occasionally overreaches itself, the odd song extends itself beyond its own tangible scope, but for sheer ambition it’ll be hard to find an album to top it this year. Just don’t expect an easy ride. JB
Outer Limits Recordings is the now defunct alter-ego of the often-AWOL Sam Mehran, formerly of Test Icicles. If you’re thinking the timing of this release is slightly odd, you’d probably be right, Outer Limits’ releases whilst still operational made little impact. But one play of this record and you’ll excuse an explanation. With stunningly psychedelic, lo-fi power-pop tracks like Liberty, Digital Girls and Julie, you can’t help but be sucked in by the delirious charm of Mehran’s hookheavy songwriting. It’s Ariel Pink on (more) acid, plunged into a vat of aqueous digital effects and launched into space. Indeed, song titles like Mind Control, I’m an Alien, and WOTM (Walking on the Moon) paint a suitably surreal picture to describe the workings at hand, while Sugar Pie is like a glittery, hallucinogenic introduction to TV’s Fun House. The second half of this (admittedly exhausting) compilation stumbles somewhat, as it loses much of the flamboyance of the first half, as well as falling victim to the unavoidably disjointed nature of a compilation, though the occasional ‘80s sci-fi instrumental partially makes up for this. But overall the richness of the music on show is more than enough to make us mourn this sadly expired project. JTB
DJRUM SEVEN LIES 2nd Drop
HURTS EXILE Epic
17/20
2/20
Felix Manuel aka DjRUM is a UK producer with the right idea; that idea being the comprehensive welding together of atmospheric sounds that can also ignite a dancefloor with ease. The aforementioned first part is achieved with a sonic depth that harks back to Triangulation-era Scuba, while the second is wonderfully addressed through harnessing techno and two-step in an addictive bassy hybrid that hypnotises and pulses these tunes out of the realm of ambient and into heady danceable jams. The triple header of DAM, Arcana (Do I Need You) and Lies, the latter of which features the oddly-typed Shad[]wb[]x, and are slices of depthy, weighty two-step whose ethereal quality are never diminished or pushed to the back of the production despite the beat hypnosis. Flashes of classical instrumentation add even more to the production value, which reaches a zenith in the haunting and moving Anchors. 2013 is unlikely to grace us with a more richly rewarding electronic effort. TF
www.crackmagazine.net
Hurts are about as gothic as Nicky Minaj and no amount of monochrome press shots, blood or song titles like The Crow, The Rope and Sandman are going to convince us this whole black charade hasn’t been dreamed up in the bowels of some record company high-rise. As they expel the lines “your broken headlamp lights your path to God” on The Road, the fact these two clowns are even attempting to impart any kind of evangelical wisdom is just downright insulting. The pompous stadium wank of single Miracle sounds like wacky Mylo Xyloto-era Coldplay, and the only thing that stops Somebody To Die For sounding like it’s plucked straight from the X Factor studio is the absence of a bunch of tasteless fuckwits giving it a round of applause at the end. The Rope sounds exactly the same until some bizarre rave sirens add a little Swedish House Mafia into the mix. But it’s the incessantly pseudo-prophetic lyrics that really wear you down. It reeks of a band trying to appeal to a base level audience who want to buy into a grand theme but can’t see past the front cover. Exile is the sound of a band plying 14 over-produced versions of Ultravox’s Vienna, and its inevitable success is nothing short of a travesty. TF