70
Albums
17
15
16 15
10
CARIBOU Our Love Merge Records Caribou’s summer-munching, soaraway single Can’t Do Without You has finally alerted the mainstream to Dan Snaith’s phenomenal talent. Admittedly, since 2010’s Swim sketched out a whole new realm of serotonin soaked pop-melancholia for the dancefloor (along with Four Tet’s similarly monumental There is Love in You), Caribou has hardly been a whispered underground secret. But the attention (and commercial success) that Can’t Do Without You has received is bait for the inevitable backlash. Is it time to start waving the “I liked him before he was massive” flag? Title track Our Love mangles throwback house and garage attitude with a winsome vocal refrain – classic Caribou. Second Chance is an album highlight: a simmering, simpering vocal from collaborator Jessy Lanza is stretched across a wonky, wandering synth line. It's just one of several clear nods to the strange saccharine production of contemporary RnB. Back Home offers a similar snapshot of modern pop production. But Snaith’s sorrowful vocals mark another key feature of the album: an overt lyrical focus on fixing, cherishing and ultimately losing yourself in love and all its derivatives. Mars is the closest thing on the album to Snaith’s output under his alternative Daphni moniker; all clipped, rotating beats and vaguely tribal aesthetics, while album closer Your Love Will Set You Free is an open-hearted merge of muted pads and swooping synths. Steeped in romance and drenched in the melodic alchemy that Snaith has all but perfected, Our Love is another modern-day classic to add to Caribou’s formidable catalogue. ! Adam Corner
VESSEL Punish, Honey TriAngle
THE GROWLERS Chinese Fountains Fat Cat Records Self acclaimed beach goths The Growlers are breaking free from the tried stereotypes critics have thrust upon them. Chinese Fountains, a concoction of 80s new wave pop and reggae is, for sure, a step in a different direction for the band. Different, yeah, but the seemingly sharp edges which hold the album together sound false – rather than new – and stand in stark, strange contrast to the band's four earlier albums. Chinese Fountains as a whole feels stunted in its imagination; repetitive blues quickly sound stagnant, insipid even. The Growlers used to sing of getting high and living life to the full, but Chinese Fountains is less hedonism and booze, more hangovers and boredom. This release should convey a darker life, a life that drink and drugs can’t mask. Sadly, the light and poppy feel leaves these motifs in the dust and the result is a forced rush of a records. On first listen you might just be taken by The Growlers’ light approach to melancholy, but in the end you'll realise you're just listening to a bunch of lazy dudes who are wholly confused about their intentions. ! Catriona Chadderton
KING TUFF Black Moon Spell Sub Pop
Vessel’s music has always framed itself within physicality. With 2012’s breakthrough debut Order Of Noise, Seb Gainsborough showcased his writhing, concessive skews of techno and dub. With Punish, Honey, the Bristol producer and Young Echo member has strived to move away from electronic sounds to produce something even more visceral. And visceral it is, using a variety of handmade instruments including flutes fashioned from old bike frames and sheets of metal for percussion to create writhing, primitive sounds. Opener Febrile begins with ten seconds of silence, with sparse clashes intensifying into machine gun percussion that sounds like a military raid, and this forceful, industrial feel sets the tone for the album. Within slices of fractured rhythms, brooding passages and blasts of cerebral assassination are moments of seductive physicality; dark, pulsing body music with a glam polish. Even the industrial parts glisten in the chugging stomp of Red Sex, Anima and DPM, carrying the kind of twisted carnal intensity that we can’t wait to hear in a dark, sweaty room. Despite the polished body armour of these stand out tracks, some of the more sparse, experimental passages soon become forgettable and – despite the press release posing the question to us – what Punish, Honey supposedly says about ‘Englishness’, we’re not quite sure. But it’s a tactility that drives Punish, Honey’s most robust moments, crafting genuinely powerful sounds with muscle and metal.
When Flying Lotus first started making waves, there was pretty unanimous critical agreement that he was the figurehead for a loosely defined new era in electronic music, bookended by the syncopated, psychedelic sunbeams and bass emissions of Los Angeles on one side of the Atlantic, and the spiralling derivatives of dubstep on the other. He’s since continued to push ever-further into the realm of the transcendental, and rhythmically ever closer to the experimental jazz aesthetics of his family past. With his fifth LP You’re Dead, we’re now experiencing pure, unadulterated Flying Lotus. Quite an experience it is too. From the astonishing cover design (by the Japanese artist Shintaro Kago, who also illustrated every individual track), to the thorough exploration of the album’s central theme (death, the afterlife and the ambiguity in between, ideas familiar from his previous two long players), this is a piece of work that is designed to be immersive. The portentous opening Theme sets the tone: sweeping and sensual. The album then swings wildly between fast-moving jazz structures, crunching electric guitar flashes and Herbie Hancock’s Fender Rhodes flourishes, before bumping into the first vocal collaborator (Kendrick Lamar) for an intense few verses. The amazingly named Dead Man’s Tetris features a claustrophobic duet between FlyLo (in his Captain Murphy guise) and Snoop Dogg, and the haunting Siren Song plunges the delicate vocals of Angel Deradoorian into a beautiful abyss. The middle third of You’re Dead! is more reflective and less relentless than the first; the calm after the storm of facing up to mortality, perhaps. Throughout, there is a fluid relationship between the rhythmic, vocal and melodic elements of the compositions: a staccato beat picks up where a rapper’s verse leaves off; a bassline lurches into the foreground to give the percussion a break. There are distinct tracks, but large chunks of the album could easily be considered sprawling yet coherent wholes. As FlyLo puts it, he wanted to make “a jazz record that feels new”. By the time Thundercat’s now familiar falsetto enters the fray, the theme of the album’s final section is signalled: spooky, sedate and serene. And as the final collaborator Niki Randa whispers sweet nothings over a swaying saunter towards the light at the end of the tunnel, the journey is complete. A 38-minute soundtrack to meeting your maker, courtesy of the one and only Flying Lotus.
“God and The Devil actually have very similar interests. They both love electric guitars and they both want you to listen to Black Moon Spell and freak the fuck out.” The words of King Tuff himself accurately set the tone for this record. Tuff believes that music flows out of him in a Donnie Darko-esque supernatural manner; he also cites his influences as fire and meatball subs. King Tuff is no ordinary man. His third album, therefore, is no ordinary album. From the moment Black Moon Spell surges into life through shudderingly distorted, powerful guitar riffs and hauntingly aggressive vocals, it's clear that Tuff means business. From ridiculous, tongue-in-cheek solos rooted in glam rock to angsty basement punk, King Tuff carelessly chucks everything in the mixer, curating a showcase of every subgenre rock ever touched in one fell swoop. While Black Moon Spell doesn’t necessarily flow and could be perceived as disjointed, indecisive or jarring, we're sure it's intentional. Tuff leaps from the brutal frenzy of Madness to the near-romantic folk of I Love You Ugly, never letting up to consider if what he’s doing is actually any good. It’s an endlessly fun ride and that is, essentially, what King Tuff is all about. So while Black Moon Spell may not necessarily, as King Tuff claims, lead to experiences of euphoria, demented visions and bouts of backwards laughter, one thing is certain, it’s a blast.
! Anna Tehabsim
! Adam Corner
! Henry Boon
FLYING LOTUS You're Dead! Warp Records