ALBUM REVIEWS
ALBUM REVIEWS
6.0
7.0
9.0
Actress
Phlash
Shit Robot
Werk Discs
Archive
DFA Records
Ghettoville
House Phillerz
Challenging, moi?
Actress
(aka
Londoner
Darren
Cunningham) is a true iconoclast, never
playing the record industry game. His last
two albums for Honest Jon’s, ‘Splazsh’
and ‘R.I.P’, were original, very weird
outsider techno mini-masterworks. It’s
clear from listening to his music that it’s
highly conceptual and dredged up from
the murkiest corners of his imagination.
But this sequel of sorts to his classic
debut ‘Hazyville’ falls flat by comparison.
Gone are the submerged, stretched disco
fragments; vanished are the playful
electro riffs. In their place are scraping,
scuffling found sound samples the like
of which would give Yvette Fielding a
nightmare. Dreary, moody, industrial
ambient for the most part, though
‘Corner’ stands out for its ultra-slow
graveyard shift, a gauzy 4/4 thump with
monstrous robotic snarls that go thump
in the night. ‘Gaze’ is a return to his past
leftfield house splendour, but overall it’s
the sound of drowning in a barbiturate
soup. Ben Murphy
PLUGGER
We Got A Love
Phlash woah!
This Is Not A Record (Sunrise
Edition)
Handy android
Phil Asher should have a blue plaque on
his house for his services to house music,
enduring and pretty much flawless as they
have been for the past couple of decades.
Reinvigorating his Phlash pseudonym for
the Italian imprint Archive has proved to
be an inspired move, his ‘House Phillerz’
EPs devastating dan cefloors across the
planet. Several of those tracks appear
here, as he flaunts his mastery with an
assured swagger. There is genuinely
not a single, solitary duffer here. Not
one. It’s got range too. ‘All I Want’ and
‘Moodswinging’ are sumptuous, Chandleresque garage, ‘Papaya Con Hierbas’ a take
on Latin-tinged techno, while ‘Despacio’
is indebted to Italo and boogie. ‘That’s
Right’ is dark and tribal, while ‘Alone In
A Crowded Room’ recalls the glory days
of Deep Dish. These are just comparisons,
though. This inspiring house music is all
his very own. Ben Arnold
7.5
PLUGGER
Ripe for plunder
Much as his cardboard box helmet
resembles a Blue Peter version of Daft
Punk’s cyborg costumes, so Irish expat Markus Lambkin’s second album
sounds as the Frenchmen might if
they had a fraction of the recording
budget and relied on roping in their
labelmates for help rather than being
able to call Nile Rodgers and Pharrell.
Like 2010’s ‘From The Cradle To The Rave’
LP, ‘We Got A Love’ is heavy on the guest
vocals; with LCD Soundsystem’s Nancy
Whang on the bouncy electro of ‘Do That
Dance’, Luke Jenner from The Rapture
doing his best Bee Gees impersonation
on ‘Feels Real’ and Chicago house veteran
Lidell Townsfell leading a sort of rave
‘Hokey Cokey’ on ‘Do It (Right)’. Even
R2D2 seems to make an appearance
singing the bleeps on the retro-house
rush of ‘Tempest’, and in many ways ‘We
Got A Love’ is just as cute. Paul Clarke
This Italian outfit operate on an intriguing
premise. All their music is based on
samples — nothing new there, you might
say. But the samples they use are from
huge artists. Take this latest record, which
uses snippets and fragments from massive
megastars like the Rolling Stones,
Pink Floyd, The Who, Jimi Hendrix, Led
Zeppelin and Ennio Morricone, among
others. In lesser hands, it could be a
godawful mess, but PLUGGER’s very clever
plunderphonics focus on a different artist
each time, constructing sampladelic
patchworks that float over (mostly) house
and techno beats. ‘The Bang Bang Reprise’
is a wonderfully eerie, echoey cosmic
disco desert excursion, while ‘Sweet 666’
robs the drum break from Zep’s ‘When The
Levee Breaks’ and the drone from ‘In The
Light’ and transfigures them into a dusted
dubstep cut. How they’ll evade the long
arm of the sample law is unclear, but it’s
a thrilling unexpected ride. Ben Murphy
Planningtorock
All Love Is Legal
6th Borough Project
Human Level
8.5
Round the bend
For a culture rooted so firmly within
homosexuality, dance music rarely
explicitly touches on its inherent
countenance of gender subversion. With
the commercialisation and popularisation
of the club scene has come play-safe
modes of music once designed to blow
social boundaries outwards. Today, the
increasingly homogenous sounds of
house and techno pay service to what’s
now a blunted tool, a catalyst that in the
‘70s (New York), ‘80s (Chicago) and ‘90s
(London) pierced the valves of sexual
repression and liberated a drastically
marginalised section of society.
On her latest full-length opus, Jam
Rostron, known to most as DFAcontributor Planningtorock, has sought
to readdress this balance. Most gay men
and women object to the word queer to
denote sexual preference, but it’s the
most appropriate way to describe Jam
and her music. If gender-bending is on
the political agenda, the musical modus
operandi here is one defined by its
weirdness.
The album’s opener ‘Welcome’ enters a
094 djmag.com.au
fantastical world of high-pitched synths,
evoking a more traditional idea of the
fabulous, closer to Sinatra than Sinitta.
‘All Love Is Legal’, with its grandiose
strings and trap hi-hats, is a rousing
anthem about emotional liberation,
while ‘Human Drama’ is a reflective and
forlorn house track indicting the unfair
and unnecessary negativity attributed
to sexual diversity. ‘Let’s Talk About
Gender’ is a straight-up disco tune paying
homage to the genre that started it all,
while ‘Misogyny Drop Dead’ is an offbeat
Dadaist experiment (it even repeatedly
samples the word ‘Da’) that twists and
bends synths into disjointed, bug-eyed
melodies. Closer ‘Patriarchy (Over & Out)’,
meanwhile, could be Hercules & Love
Affair.
A brave and pertinent attack on an issue
so regularly ignored in dance music
today, ‘All Love Is Legal’ is both wistful
and unwavering in its exploration; a
challenging, at times chaotic listen
that’s as enjoyable as it is playfully
experimental. Adam Saville
Borough 2 Borough
8.5
7.0
6.0
9.0
The Jaydes
Tensnake
Terrence Parker
Virgin
Planet E
Bosconi
Ever ended up collaborating with a mate
because you kept sharing so much gear
between each other to keep costs down
that a natural partnership developed?
Not a particularly far-fetched situation
to imagine, if you haven’t already been
through this yourself. What makes
The Jaydes’ story different is that this
accidental alliance is actually quite good.
Together, producers Bloody Mary and
Attan trawl through house and techno’s
various offshoots over the decades.
From vocal-heavy proto-trance to full-on
stabby rave, they use classic hardware
immaculately produced and mixed
down to infectious pop perfection. It’s
not serious, nor tries to be weird and
challenging; this is well-made, fun dance
music made to, you know, have fun and
dance to? Put it on and get down, whether
you’re in a club or in front of your mirror
with nothing to be ashamed of.
Zara Wladawsky
Gesaffelstein managed to migrate to
Parlophone (Universal) without changing
his spots last year. Tensnake, however, has
grown a new skin entirely after getting
picked up by Virgin (also Universal).
By skin, we actually mean a massive
techni-coloured dream coat lined with
rabbit fur. Those who relished the tropical
steel drums of ‘Coma Cat’ can hear them
on ‘Love Sublime’, featuring a standard
Nile Rodgers riff, a track that’s almost
passable as the Tensnake we love until the
tawdry disco diva vocals. ‘Feel Of Love’,
with Jacques Lu Cont, does R obert Palmer
with a French touch, while Jamie Lidell
does his best Andre 3000 impression.
‘Selfish’ is diluted ‘Need Your Lovin’’ with
a crap R&B vocal and ‘58BPM’ is also shit,
like Imogen Heap attempting witch house.
It’s not all bad, though. ‘No Colour’ is
like listening to the Drive soundtrack on
ketamine, and ‘No Relief’ is well-made
dancefloor house similar to Dusky.
Adam Saville
It’s easy to forget sometimes that Detroit
has a healthy house heritage as well as a
shining techno legacy. At the forefront of
the Motor City’s house persona is Terrence
Parker, a prolific veteran whose sound
focuses firmly on the soulful side of things.
In ‘Life On The Back 9’, Parker is pure in
his vision of uplifting, melodic vibes,
revelling in sunny piano riffs and
heartfelt vocal turns from guest singers.
The gospel house message runs strong
throughout the album, and there are only
a few techy twists (primarily ‘My Virtuous
Woman’ and ‘Pentecost’, both of which
boast some of the strongest grooves on
the album), so don’t come here expecting
dark or deep dancefloor deviations.
But if you’re after a smooth, soulful
showcase of classic house ideals from an
expert, Parker provides. Tristan Parker
The Clover’s debut album on home label
Bosconi is an all-Italian affair that proves
there is more to the country’s musical
output than dry, endlessly churning
minimal and tech house. Made up of
Andrea Giachetti, Antonio Pecori and
Stefano Meucci, the collective have
been making music and playing live
together since 2006, and both those
facts work in their favour: ‘Processes’
is as accomplished sounding as it is
alive from start to finish, with writhing
analogue lines and ramshackle drums
bring palpable dynamism to every track.
Some are purposefully slow and sound
like they might collapse à la Kassem
Mosse, others glint and glisten at pace
and come over like something Zip might
play. Importantly, the same trick is never
repeated and nothing sounds loopy,
which means that despite this being
13 tracks deep and fairly suited to the
dancefloor, it’s never less than vital even
at home. Kristan J Caryl
8.0
The Clover
Dame Music
Delusions Of Grandeur
The Jaydes
Un-Jayded after all these
years
Glow
Snake me up before you go-go
Life On The Back 9
Soulful side of the street
Processes
Live house experiments
Retro refinery
ASIDE from the obligatory ‘Intro’,
a retro disco diva sample, you’d be
forgiven for expecting Glaswegians
Craig Smith and Graeme ‘The
Revenge’ Clark to venture further
into unchartered territory after
hearing ‘Our Love’, a slightly offbeat
future funk track closer to Letherette
than the majority of warm, stodgy
slo-mo disco found on their 2011
debut LP under the same moniker,
‘One Night In The Borough’.
However, with ‘U Know U’ it’s back
to business as usual, but that’s no
complaint. There are few in the
game better at languid disco with a
vintage feel, and ‘Think It Over’ is
112bpm sample-based dancefloor
fodder at its finest.
‘In Your Arms’ is nothing but glitterball class, while ‘Through The Night’
is lumbering funk with soulful
strings made for no other reason
than to encourage us to turn the
lights low and make babies. ‘The Call
Back’ is more of the same, but even
more seductive, borrowing from the
Prelude Records school of boogie,
whereas ‘Read My Mind’ is throbbing
indigo house built on a bassline Carl
Craig would be proud of.
Indicative of dark, underground pub
basements with low level ceilings,
6th Borough Project’s second album
once again boils the original sounds
of New York, Detroit and Chicago
down to their finer elements,
stripping them back and laying them
out into a linear 4/4 house formula.
Steady, sexy and sophisticated,
‘Borough 2 Borough’ presents yet
another solid handbook, and you’d
be a silly billy to miss it. Adam
Saville
djmag.com.au 095