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DECEMBER 2014
JB Hi-Fi
www.jbhifi.com.au/music22
Black Cab
Games of the XXI Olympiad
Black Cab take an expansive, marathon approach on a concept album about 1976’s
Montreal Summer Olympics, at which drug-abusing East German teams thrived and
Australia earned not a single medal. The indulgence of concept albums often matches
their ambition, but the Melburnians show great discipline. Even when stretching
to heady reaches – hear the 10-minute, vocoder-laced
Supermadchen
– there’s an
exacting focus. These 13 tracks stoke tension like an expert film score, vividly evoking a
bygone era – and succeeding on their own. It’s also an unabashed love letter to synths
and the gurgling analogue electronics that powered Kraftwerk and New Order – the
cavernous space encourages us to lose ourselves in each pulsing moment. Members
of Lowtide, Pikelet and The Sand Pebbles contribute, and co-producer Woody Annison
lends his usual sonic depth, but James Lee and Andrew Coates remain the heart of the
band. To them electronic pop is no fleeting confection, but a widescreen experience
to transporting us to another time and place. Whether to ’70s Montreal or elsewhere,
transported you will be.
Interstate 40/Remote Control/Inertia
Arca
Xen
Venezuelan oddball Arca (aka Alejandro Ghersi) has produced Kanye and
FKA Twigs, and his debut album seals his visionary reputation. Standing
outside of established genre lines, Ghersi makes music somewhere
between the digitised, industrial, and romantic. Whiffs of vaporwave
surface on the title track, and other tracks’ wonky ambience and crumbling motifs align
them with the latest albums by Actress and Oneohtrix Point Never. But there are plenty of
surprises, too. The constant collision of classical and post-modern, lovely and misshapen,
defines an LP that’s always questing for new possibilities.
Mute/Create Control/Universal
Yacht
Where Does this Disco?
In between albums, LA duo Yacht release a four-song EP that’s as elastic
and retro as anything they’ve done. The title track is a compact, squiggly
ode to the CD format that later gets stretched past six minutes in Jerome
LOL’s pleasantly discursive remix.
Works Like Magic
is even rubberier
somehow, highlighting Claire L. Evans’s daggy vocal deadpan, and
Terminal Beach
nails the
punk side of angular New Wave. It’s more of a entrée than a meal, but it reminds us just
how well Yacht do self-aware electro-pop.
Downtown/Create Control/Universal
Klo
Cusp
Simon Lam’s production finesse is well known from his Melbourne
trio I’lls, but he bends it to newly accessible purposes in Klo, his duo
with cousin Chloe Kaul. Between her slinky vocals and his percolating
backdrops, this is an intimately catchy team-up that’s already sparked
global attention. Cusp is their digital-only debut EP, uniting the blog-friendly previous
singles
Make Me Wonder, Under Lie
and
False Calls
with two new tracks. They’ve got the
same woozy emotional sway as early Chet Faker, and later Everything But the Girl.
Dot Dash/Remote Control/ Unavailable on CD, stream at JB HI-FI NOW
Deptford Goth
Songs
English singer/producer Daniel Woolhouse’s second album as Deptford
Goth places newfound emphasis on his voice. His high falsetto on
Do
Exist
evokes Bon Iver, while such purred vocals over late-night electronics
can recall James Blake. Many of these songs manifest as elegant slow-
burns, not climaxing but merely artfully simmering.
Two Hearts
feels like the breakout song
here, and a push closer to more traditional pop while retaining a brooding intimacy. So
much sleepy melancholy gets to be a drag over time, but it’s welcome in small doses.
Cooperative/Universal
DANCE/ELECTRONIC
Doug Wallen
dances with himself.
RL Grime
Burnt Offering
While elusive UK producer Burial’s chewed, stretched, decelerated vocal
treatments have done a lot in terms of expanding the post-dubstep
movement’s aesthetic and musical palette, they have also resulted in a
lot of infuriating pastiches. Enter RL Grime, a lively young NYC producer
known for his impressive bootleg remixes of various high-profile artists (Kanye and Rihanna
included). While there’s plenty to like about his debut record of banging bass music and
techno angularity (check the smoking
Danger
), when he attempts to offer light and shade,
things turn awry. His noisier moments veer towards ‘bro-step’ while his quieter, vocal-
riddled atmospheres resemble a kind of musical chipmunkery.
Warner
Machinedrum
Neverlove
The title of Machinedrum’s latest set of tightly sequenced and manicured
bass music explorations is somewhat misleading.
Vapor City Archives
is
anything but a retrospective of old ideas and past triumphs. Rather, the
follow-up to 2013’s
Vapor City
is brimming with swabbing synths, frenetic
beat attacks, stark bass/treble dynamics and wildly expanded reimaginings of what might
have once been phrased as drum ‘n’ bass. Opener
Boxoff
is a searing ascent – scattershot
snares opening out into deep, thick clouds of synths and vocal waves.
Hard 2 Be
pulses and
shakes with nimble rhythmic intonations, poppy vocal hooks and heavy-set bass. Even when
gazing back, Machinedrum continues to forge a path forward.
Ninja Tune/Inertia
Various
A Fine Selection of Independent Disco,
Modern Soul and Boogie 1978–82
As much as
DISCO
– yet another finely curated set of rare, historical cuts from
London’s astute Soul Jazz imprint – does much to free the genre from often
painfully flippant connotations, it also exposes its inherent limitations. Focusing
on a relatively tight timeframe and in the midst of the movement’s heyday (and exploring its more
experimental leanings into modern soul), this compilation says a lot about both disco’s danceable
qualities and almost irksome polish. Jessie G, Superfunk, John Gibbs and the US Steel Orchestra all
make choice appearances, but it might be tough to bring the disco-adverse around.
Soul Jazz/Inertia
Dels
Petals Have Fallen
Dels isn’t your average MC. On second record
Petals Have Fallen
, the
London-based rapper shifts between moody, grit-strewn vocal melodics and
hectic, technical rhyme attacks, all delivered via impossibly smooth, measured
intonation, cadence and flow. Likewise, his wider musicality – realised with the
help of producer Kwes – twitches, shudders and sways with a rippling array of styles and nuances.
Fall Apart
and
RBG
swerve between dirty bass music and ball-tearing rock, while
Pulls
resembled a
plaintive re-routed interpretation of ’90s NYC hip hop. Perhaps Dels’ most impressive feat is a knack
for understatement. In lesser hands, it may have been a trumped-up rap opera.
Big Dada/Inertia
The Wu-Tang Clan
A Better Tomorrow
A legacy can be a curse, especially for artists whose early work strayed close to iconoclasm. Every
meticulously crafted, well-realised or mature later career effort will pale in comparison to the early, raw
and relatively unedited. Good albums are built in studios: great albums emerge as signposts of social
and cultural context. The Wu-Tang Clan – and their hugely anticipated sixth album
A Better Tomorrow,
which arrives two decades after their world-changing debut
Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)
– is
a prime example. The weight of the nine-piece’s history haunts their every move, including the
purportedly fractured, conflict-strewn making of the new record. And from its opening stanza – the
sprawling, key-flecked manifesto
Ruckus In B Minor
, featuring all MCs on deck – it’s clear this no gritty
throwback, as the lurking guitars and pianos of
Felt
reiterate. This is polished, balanced and reflective.
Indeed, there’s all manner of drama, theatre and plaintiveness here, if little that ties
A Better Tomorrow
to the gritty minimalism of its predecessors, save the ever-charismatic, ever-astute Clan itself.
Keep
Watch
is an anomaly; with Meth, Deck and GZA unfurling over a straight-up-and-down, crunching beat.
An interesting addition to the Wu catalogue, but not life-changing.
Warner Music
Dan Rule
is a writer, publisher, art critic and total hip hop fanatic.
Want moreWu-Tang Clan? Check out their back catalogue, and releases from RZA, GZA, Raekwon and others on JB Hi-Fi Now.
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