Rating: NNNNN
Lounge
LEMON JELLY Lost Horizons (XL) Rating: NNNN
Sound designers of the highest order, loungey duo Lemon Jelly make the kind of music you’d expect from a former graphic designer and sound engineer. As on their lemonjelly.ky singles collection, Lost Horizons is a set of perfectly arranged, effortless and stylish electro pop. Beats gurgle and bloop under samples from lunar landings, instructional records and train trips, everything seems perfectly proportioned, and pulse-raising tempos are kept to a minimum. Admittedly, the Orb did much of this earlier, but under the influence of heroic spliffs. The Lemon Jelly lads seem too respectable for such underground behaviour. Lost Horizons isn’t particularly challenging, but it does sound and look lovely, and sometimes that’s all that matters.MG
SAINT ETIENNE Finisterre (Beggar’s) Rating: NN
Cool and almost comically detached from the real world, Saint Etienne return to their pure pop fantasyland with disco on the brain. Finisterre juices up the trio’s familiar take on airy, classic pop with throbbing house lite, thumping blandly while Sarah Cracknell coos and purrs. It’s all effortless and well crafted. Unfortunately, most of it is indistinguishable from the considerably less stylish though equally vapid dance pop of Victoria Beckham and S Club 7. There is no passion and even less soul to Cracknell’s singing, while her pasty stab at hiphop is as dreadful as it sounds. St. Etienne are at the Opera House November 23.MG
SUPREME BEINGS OF Leisure Divine Operating System (Palm) Rating: NN
L.A.-based triphop pop band Supreme Beings of Leisure return with another album of easy-listening electronica. Pleasant enough as background music, Divine Operating System will probably end up on many a trendy martini bar’s CD changer. However, the spy-movie soundtrack shtick is getting pretty tired, as are the token record scratching and soulless attempts at disco house. Is there really a need for kitsch without irony? The bonus DVD of 5.1 surround mixes and a digital press kit is a pretty annoying marketing gimmick and adds little except for making it hard to fit the thing in a CD rack. Instantly forgettable.BB
House
Digital Disco (Force Tracks) Rating: NNNN There’s not really a genre name for the music showcased here, so disco-tech will have to do for now. Essentially, this compilation features artists mainly known for more restrained techno and tech-house getting their cheap disco thrills out. Hearing radio-friendly pop songs from people like Akufen, Swayzak and Hakan Lidbo is a bit disorienting, but this might just be the shot in the arm that techno needs. It’s fun music that’s still creatively produced. Highlights include the chop-and-slice funk of Astrobal’s Magic Lady, Metro Area’s Miura and Herbert’s bouncy sing-along remix of Akufen’s Deck The House.BB
DINO & TERRY Deep: Inside (EFA) Rating: NNN Local house heroes Dino & Terry check in with an unmixed compilation of their current favourite deep house and garage tracks, including a couple of their own remixes. If you’re familiar with their DJing, you’ll know what to expect from this: lots of soulful vocals, sweet melodies, live instrumentation and swinging house beats. Their taste tends toward song-driven dance music, so the fact that the compilation is unmixed isn’t much of a problem. But, considering the length of songs (none is under six minutes), a DJ mix might’ve been a better way to showcase them.BB
TYLER STADIUS Fabric 06 (Fabric) Rating: NNN
Europe’s favourite Vancouver-based DJ, Tyler Stadius gets the honour of doing the sixth mix CD for infamous UK club Fabric’s series of discs. Favouring the dubby West Coast take on tech-house, Stadius likes it stripped down and trippy, occasionally verging on progressive but without getting too bogged down in repetitive synth figures or trance references. He seems especially intent on promoting fellow Vancouverite Jay Tripwire, selecting three of his tracks for the mix. The only problem is, Stadius’s taste is so particular that almost all the selections sound like they were made in the same studio.BB
METRO AREA (Environ) Rating: NNNNN
The New Jersey-based duo of Morgan Geist and Darshan Jesrani are in a category all their own. Best described as disco-tech, they fuse the sounds of 80s disco and electro with the stripped-down austerity of techno and house. The result sounds familiar and nostalgic but at the same time more tasteful and focused than any of the classic sounds they imitate. Sort of like what you wish the instrumental dubs of early proto-house had sounded like. This debut album rounds up some of their best 12-inch singles of the past couple of years with a lot of unreleased tracks, and is essential for lovers of deep house and techno as well as those recently smitten by the electro revival.BB
Electronic
BOVINE LIFE vs. KOMET [reciprocess: +/vs.], Vol. 1 (Fallt/Bip-Hop) Rating: NNN
Some of the best electronic music comes out of collaborations. It’s often too easy for an artist to descend into self-indulgence when locked in a studio alone. This is the first in a series of collaborative albums made by various minimalist glitch artists, in this case pairing Bovine Life and Komet. Unfortunately, the bulk of the album’s material consists of solo pieces, with a few collaborations and remixes of each other’s stuff. These are the most interesting, although fans of either artist should enjoy the whole album. Komet’s contributions tend toward the overly restrained and mechanical, while Bovine Life’s half of the CD is more spastic and unpredictable, even humorous at times.BB
BURDY 42 (Sunshine) Rating: NNN
UK-based DJ/producer Burdy (one half of Baby Mammoth) goes back to his downtempo roots with this release, coming up with an album of blunted instrumental hiphop that would sound at home on any Ninja Tune compilation of the past 10 years. Not exactly groundbreaking any more, but it’s still a fairly enjoyable album. The most inspired moments come on the few house-influenced broken beat tracks, a form for which he’s a little better-known these days. Worth checking if you’re one of those who refuse to let triphop die. BB
DEADBEAT Wild Life Documentaries (Scape) Rating: NNNN
Deadbeat (aka Scott Monteith) is a fixture on the burgeoning Montreal techno scene who, along with most of his contemporaries there, specializes in the slice-and-dice sample-mangling form sometimes referred to as micro-house. In this release, he takes on the form of vintage dub reggae but executes it using decidedly contemporary techniques. Forget all the other disappointing excursions into digital dub. This is the real deal and anything but generic. For the most part subdued, slow-moving and starkly minimalist, the disc requires a certain attention span in the listener, but the varied and creative processing techniques keep you interested.BB
HOMELIFE Flying Wonders (Ninja Tune) Rating: NNNNN
Like a more eclectic, twang-free version of Lambchop, Manchester’s Homelife collective work with a decidedly wide-screen approach. The 15-member ensemble features members from Brazil, China and Vancouver Island and make some of the least classifiable, most intriguing music I’ve heard all year. Mashing up bits of Brazilian music, twisted pop, Chinese classical music, skittering club music and errant bloops and bleeps. When they want to straighten themselves out, as on the staggering, shockingly hummable Fairweather View, the results are as respectable as you could imagine from a group that includes 808 State’s Graham Massey on clarinet. More often, though, Homelife prefer to keep it well warped. Baffling and utterly beautiful.MG
Mas Confusion (K7) Rating: NNNN
Mas Confusion is a compilation mainly made up of demos sent to Funkstörung for their label, Musik aus Strom. Assembled by them and Funckarma, it’s a treasure trove of elegant, pretty electronic music. While the tracks are still very much rooted in IDM, the overall feel is best summed up by the title of Mr. Projectile’s contribution, Less Math More Music — meaning that the emphasis is less on studio trickery and more on memorable melodies. Focusing on unknown producers, it also contains quality cuts from better-known artists like Metamatics and Lusine. BB
NIGHTMARES ON WAX Mind Elevation (Warp) Rating: NN
This is the fourth album from Nightmares on Wax, and this time around they seem intent on distancing themselves from the chill-hop they were initially known for. They bring reggae and soul influences to the forefront and also add a few vocalists. It’s all quite pleasant but too close to generic, easy-going pop. Token dub effects crop up, yet there are few moments of truly interesting production, and for some reason the more sonically creative tracks, Soul Ho and Mirrorball, have both been edited down to less than two minutes apiece. The rest attempts unconvincingly to sound like a band but comes off more like disposable advertisement soul.BB
SASHA Airdrawndagger (BMG) Rating: NNN
Superstar trance DJ Sasha surprised many when his long-awaited debut album turned its back on the progressive and trance he’s known for. Unlike Paul Oakenfold, who tried to overcome his lack of production knowledge by employing a cast of thousands to help him out, Sasha decided to learn how to produce himself (albeit with a bit of help from Junkie XL and Charlie May). The result is closest to mid-90s atmospheric electronica, and much of it comes close to ambient house territory. While not groundbreaking or revolutionary, it’s quite listenable, though most of his fans will be confused and perhaps disappointed by the lack of four-on-the-floor beats, trance references and vocals.BB
SHIFTED PHASES The Cosmic Memoirs Of The Late Great Rupert J. Rosinthorpe (Tresor) Rating: NNNN
Shifted Phases is actually the pseudonym of the mysterious Detroit techno entity known as Drexciya. Unfortunately, James “Drexciya” Stinson passed away due to heart complications shortly before this album was to be released, making its title strangely prophetic. This is very much an electro album but miles away from the current crop of electroclash upstarts. This melancholy and introverted music should appeal especially to Detroit techno fans. Though deceptively simple, the album reveals deep layers of textures in the course of repeated listenings.BB
