new release

Fuck Buttons – Tarot Sport

/ David James / 16 Comments

Fuck Buttons released one of the most interesting and polarizing albums of 2008, one of several named on my end of the year list (which would undoubtedly have been published here if Optimistic Underground was running at the time) and a perennial physical overload to unwitting passengers in my car.  This October the English duo are set to blow faces off and disintegrate non-believers with the sonic asteroid they’ve named Tarot Sport.

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Using the word epic to describe this music is beyond moot; it’s simply a given at this point.  Yet this fact does little to temper the unshakeable urge to invoke it – and feel it – on every listen.  This is the sort of thing epic was coined for.  Kicking off with the dancefloor earthquake of Surf Solar, expanded to 10 minutes from its early incarnation as a 7″ single, the album shouts its thesis from a mountaintop and gets moving at a breakneck clip.  With an insistent four on the floor beat and stocatto-spliced vocal clips there’s no wonder which of debut Street Horrrsing‘s tracks was the launch point for this sophomore triumph: shining, atmospheric, ass-shaking standout Bright Tomorrow.  Every track, though submerged in the same industrial crunch mana Fuck Buttons are known for, feels more breathable, open, dynamic and most of all catchy, than anything they’ve yet created.  Third track The Lisbon Maru gently (and subtly) conjures the pulsing power-surge key stabs from the debut’s stellar opening (and most popular) track Sweet Love For Planet Earth, swaddling the backbone in vacuumed reverb and what sounds like hundreds of damaged violins compressed into a small wind tunnel and dialing up the velocity throughout its run.

After this point the album transforms into pure, blissed out, pounding noisy nirvana.  Fourth track Olympians blasted its way to the top of my list, where it reigns with impunity, after only my first two listens.  Not content with merely teasing their dancefloor intentions or continuing to shy away from unabashed melody, this striking 10 minute centerpiece showcases everything Fuck Buttons do well and then some.  Finally delivering on the ambitious promise suggested all along, the moment is a revelation: a band fully coming into their own as artists and hitting an undeniably assured stride.  Nothing feels remotely tentative about the syncopated big beat drums beamed through the tonal cloud this song is born in, nor the manner in which every element seems to gather up, tightening into a coiled rhythmic outburst in anticipation of the mythical organ swells beginning three minutes in.  It’s a gorgeous night sky colored with soaring waves of heartrending resonance and shimmering supernovas, exploding out of the mix like galactic pop rocks – a transcendent meteor shower as close and tangible as the ‘play’ button.

Topping that monster would be difficult, if not impossible; the guys instead turn and unleash a funky blast of head clearing noise bop in a (relatively) concise 5 minutes, before diving into sonic rollercoaster Space Mountain (appropriately titled) with driving tribal percussion and twinkling keyboards ablaze.  A nearly-clean guitar tone drives the action, disintegrating in the atmosphere, enveloped in feedback, before giving way to the final push:  closer Flight of the Serpent and its destructive martial stomp.  Swooning UK post rock guitar moves over a clattering speed-march rhythm section, bursting with feedback at just the right moments and sharing the spotlight with a romantic organ pulse grown from Olympians‘ seed.  Feeling almost like a burly reprisal of that apex, the swarm of drone flies suddenly drop away at the halfway point, exposing the skeletal drum pattern and letting it hang, galloping along unadorned for several moments.  Thankfully, majestic crests of oceanic keyboard melody and shattering light beams of narcotic bliss return to guide the album to a satisfactorily dizzying end.

Watch this clip with the volume cranked to whet your appetite if my words haven’t already.

[and make sure to preorder the album at boomkat, norman records (vinyl!), or rough trade – or make your purchase at a local record shop when it drops on October 12]

Dusty Kid – A Raver’s Diary

/ David James / 3 Comments

Here we have a truly mind warping, expansive, and impulsively danceable new album from Dusty Kid.  It’s a headlong rush into ballsy beats and trance-inducing atmospheres seemingly forgotten since the heyday of Underworld or Chemical Brothers.  There is a reason, after all, the album is titled A Raver’s Diary.

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The record starts things off on a minimal tack, with the first song’s title broadly (but reductively) indicative of the forthcoming beats –  Here Comes The Techno.   The course is seemingly set for some ambient house, minimal techno, essentially Kompakt-esque left-of-the-dial approach.  That notion is neatly sliced apart via Lynchesque, an off-kilter wobble of pulsing dub beats and stratospheric key tones.  Tension and surprising depth are revealed as layers are peeled away, then rebuilt with pinpoint accuracy, paving the way toward the rest of the album’s skyward trajectory.

Soaring above cumulonimbus clouds on the quarter-hour behemoth America, the rocketship momentum blasts through affecting surges of echoed guitar tones and romantic organ swells, the distinct feeling of a heart growing four times it’s size.  Feeling like a series of towering waves crashing against eardrums, every buildup and breakdown reveals richer textures and an evolving structure.  The low-end grows deeper, organs are interrupted by staccato-pulse synths, strings and woodwind gusts wash over the dubby guitar line… and it all recedes into a gentle lull you may have seen coming for miles, but were hoping would happen anyway.  It’s instantly rebuilt, vertically, with an intense picked guitar solo as the spine every element wraps seamlessly around.  Anyone with a heartbeat would want to repeat the track at once; Dusty Kid never allows the opportunity to arise.  Agaphes grabs the torch running full speed and jumps through multiple doorways, burning toward the terminal end of this habit-forming beat odyssey.

After that, it’s okay to hit Play again.  In fact, it’s recommended.  The perspective is essential for grasping the journey this album takes.  He drops the listener straight into a party comprised of the tangible accumulated knowledge of travellers who journeyed to learn what partying meant.  Which is to say.. nothing more, nothing less, than the thrill of the rhythm.  Have fun.

[get your hands on this at boomkat or check out amazon – if so, make sure to utilize the customer review function to negate the ridiculous shipping-related score of 1 star (by a fellow who obviously doesn’t know what ‘review’ means)]

Shogun Kunitoki – Vinonaamakasio

/ David James / 5 Comments

vinonaamakasio

With a name like Shogun Kunitoki, you’d be forgiven for assuming the band is Japanese in origin.  Fittingly, they’re scandinavian.  These Finnish fellows create a sound which I first described as “Steve Reich using Black Moth Super Rainbow‘s instruments, scoring a Miyazaki film” upon hearing the debut, Tasankokaiku.  And truthfully, my silly description still stands tall if you’re familiar with the references.  If not, then read on.

This band takes elements of the strain of minimalism exemplefied by Terry Riley and later, Steve Reich – but the influence is exactly that:  an element of the sound.  The album is full of defiantly  fleshed-out songs with structure and mood shifts, beginnings and endings.  The instrumentation is refreshingly lived-in, with warm analog synths and the unprogrammed appeal of live percussion.  The atmosphere is pure 60’s sci-fi and lounge wrung through a modern sensibility which betrays the artists’ hindsight and ingenuity; in other words, this music doesn’t simply coast on the preconditioned atmosphere moog tones and synth squeals conjure – it’s pulsing with the (seeming) foreknowledge of punk zeal, bulging fuzzy psychedelic rock acoustics, and a post-rock ache for reinvention of the comfortable and pedestrian.

If you are familiar with the debut album, then you know what to expect when I say it’s more of the same and beyond.  In other words, there are no game-changing shifts in approach;  this is an update and expansion on the unique slice of sound Shogun Kunitoki have previously carved out for themselves.

And if you’re truly lacking in inspiration, do yourself and the world a favor:  go watch Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind.