KATE BOY ONE
Fiction Records // November 6th Guess what? Sweden’s making progressive, yet entirely infectious pop music. Nothing new then. Except that Stockholm-based Kate Boy are a hybrid, punch-packing duo: Aussie, Kate Akhurst, brings aggro-tinged melody to Markus Dextegen’s undeniably Scandi, industrial production. Inspired in part by a legendary late-70s synthesizer, ONE sees the pair create a potent cocktail of unceasingly industrial, foot-stomping electro-pop with boundless kinetic energy to fire-up the ‘Human Engine’. Day one Kate Boy fans will be very pleased to see the appearance of eye-opening, addictive favourites ‘Northern Lights’ and ‘The Way We Are’, somehow still possessing all the same vigour of the first listen. These old friends are joined by equally uplifting, rambunctious numbers throughout, embodied by ‘Higher’, which climbs to a cacophony of wonderfully mind-bending factory-esque rumblings. ONE listen won’t be nearly enough. George O’Brien
FUFANU
MARK MCGUIRE
One Little Indian // November 27th
Dead Oceans // November 13th
The foreboding post-punk rumble of ‘Now’ powers up Fufanu’s debut album, one that seldom wavers in mood till its cycle is run. Dense electro-industrial sonics underpin vocalist Kaktus Einarsson’s melancholic Icelandic inflections, while the flicker of an FX pedal or passing harmonic bleep provide the glint in the granite. Skittering, almost jazzy drum patterns offer a humanising outlet, and when Fufanu loosen the bolts and grease the wheels a little – as on the rowdy garage-rock of ‘Blinking’ or the percussive shuffle counteracting thick chordal stabs on ‘Northern Gannet’ – Einarsson seems to loosen up too. On the quirky ‘Plastic People’, discordant arpeggios and a fine slackened beat help to unspool Fufanu’s mechanised modus operandi, and the band sound more engaging for it. Nick Mee
Friday the 13th will be unlucky for some. I’m thinking of the unlucky few shelling out for guitar impresario Mark McGuire’s dreadful soft rock solo album. And no, there’s not been a mix up at the Steely Dan pressing plant. It’s just that these songs ‘are not just music; they’re statements’ his label claims. Yet wait! Just what exactly are the goofball jam and limp synthesizers of opener ‘The Naacals’ saying? It’s a mystery. And a big shame because McGuire of Emeralds fame can shred with the best of them – even if he can’t sing for toffee. He eventually lets his axe loose on the Tortoise-apeing and cringey-titled ‘The Past Presents the Future’ but it can’t stop the album assuming its warning label: Beyond Belief. Geoff Cowart
FEW MORE DAYS TO GO
BEYOND BELIEF
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