Album: Clinic - Do It! (Domino)

Last year, Clinic cleared house with rarities collection, Funf. As underwhelming as it is, it could prove to be the band's most significant statement, as their fifth studio album, Do It! sees Clinic make their first steps forward since their classic debut, Internal Wrangler.

Do It! eschews the scratchy D.I.Y. aesthetic that has atrophied Clinic's career over the last three albums and goes for a pin-sharp production style, but most importantly, the Liverpudlians have knuckled down on the songwriting front, making Do It! their most immediately likeable album in eight years.

Clinic haven't lost any of the idiosyncrasies that have formed their sound since inception, but their quirks no longer overpower the songs. This is clear from the outset with the fractured psych-punk-stomp, 'Memories', which alternates between Nuggets fuzz and eerie prog-pop melodic interludes, but the transition never jars, serving the overall feel of playful schizophrenia. Elsewhere, 'Emotions' is a woozy dreamboat sway that Johnny Ray would have been proud of, 'The Witch' is the closest they've come to the spirit of The Monks without aping them outright, while the overdriven sax and violence whirlwind of 'Shopping Bag' is thrillingly bracing.

Ade Blackburn's tortured sneer is as simultaneously malevolent and vulnerable as it's ever been and on 'Free Not Free' channels an eloquent grace not tapped since 'Distortions'. All of which makes Do It! Clinic's best full-length since their first and quite possibly their best full stop. What a pleasant surprise.

http://highvoltage.org.uk/displaydemoreview.asp?num=3533&band=161

Album: Andrew Weatherall - Watch The Ride (Harmless)

Nowadays you can download excellent mixes for free on an almost daily basis. Free from licensing constraints, DJs are free to put whatever the hell they like on an online mix, leading to net mixes more closely resembling what it's like to catch those DJs in their natural settings; a sweaty club.

This means then, that to persuade the average electronic music fan to part with upwards of ten quid for a mix CD, labels and DJs are having to pull out the stops a little more. Mixes are inherently more transient than artist albums anyway, with only a handful of mixes resonating past their meagre shelf-life. The Watch The Ride series has thus far been more throwaway than most, seeing the likes of Tom Findlay and Zinc turn in 'will this do?' snoreathons. That they've snagged Andrew Weatherall, one of the best DJs around, is head-turning enough in this crowded marketplace and the trademark Weatherall magpie spirit is definitely in evidence here.

It's a typically dark, dubby, danceable affair, with the curveballs coming thick and fast, but as with most mixes, come the end, you can't help but feel that the thrills are merely vicarious in nature. Maybe this mix might open people up to the Afro-jazz-disco delights of Mock & Toof or the emotive melodic techno of Danton Eeprom, but in an age where you can get better mixes than this for free, it just serves as a reminder that your money will be better spent going to see Weatherall in a dingy basement somewhere.

http://highvoltage.org.uk/displaydemoreview.asp?num=3596&band=492

Album: Funky Nassau: The Compass Point Story 1980-1986 (Strut)

About damn time someone put together a Compass Point compilation. It's not just reckless hyperbole to say that some of the best music of the 1980s – all time, even - came out of that Bahaman studio. A combination of location, the right engineers, producers and musicians and a common goal to make it funky, above all else led to Compass Point gaining notoriety amongst right-thinking musicians at the time, making it THE place to record.

Strut's compilation gathers together some of the studio's lesser-known highlights and some you should know and love already, but it's by no means exhaustive. I guess the 'Funky' in the title should have been a signifier, but a more comprehensive look at CP's history wouldn't have gone amiss. So we get 'Genius Of Love', 'Spasticus Autisticus' and 'My Jamaican Guy', alongside obscurities such as laid-back, sun-kissed disco masterclass, 'Obsession' by Guy Cuevas, the dubby new wave of Cristina's 'You Rented A Space' and cosmic classic, 'Adventures In Success (Dub Copy)' by Will Powers.

There's no room, however, for any B-52s, Black Uhuru (a missed opportunity if ever there was one) or anything from Bjork's Post (the timeframe did for that). Hell, they could have squeezed 'Back In Black' on there for shits and giggles, surely. That's for another collection though and you can't argue with the riches here. Any compilation that features Grace Jones, Tom Tom Club and Gwen Guthrie and also acts as a primer for some of the most luxuriously spacious dance music ever created gets my vote.

http://www.highvoltage.org.uk/displaydemoreview.asp?num=3526&band=492

Album: Neon Neon - Stainless Style (Lex)

What seems like nothing more than a zany idea – a concept record about bad-boy automobile engineer, John DeLorean – actually makes perfect sense. DeLorean's colourful life makes for an intriguing jumping-off point, filled as it was with starfucking endeavours, drug deals gone wrong and muscle cars. What could go wrong?

Well, very little, on the face of it. Gruff Rhys and Boom Bip's Stainless Style blinds you with its surface sheen and multifarious hooks and it has to be said that, weak Yo Majesty! guest spot, 'Sweat Shop' aside, every track here could be a megahit. In 1985, at least. There are some genuinely great pop songs here – the paranoia-wracked electro-funk of 'Michael Douglas', 'Luxury Pool', on which Fat Lip paints DeLorean as a kind of Frank Lucas of the car industry and, best of all, 'I Told Her On Alderaan' which acts as the best argument for John Hughes resurrecting his career, if only to have this soundtrack the prom night sequence – but Stainless Style never fully gels.

Why? Well, the musical styles are so disparate and the sequencing so off-whack that the conceptual ruse proves to be counter-intuitive. Sometimes, it's almost as if there are two albums playing simultaneously. I appreciate Rhys' and Bip's devotion to 80s nostalgia while having one foot firmly planted in the here-and-now, but the power pop and electro never totally coalesce. So while Stainless Style features some of the finest pop moments in recent years, it ultimately serves as proof that a great album always has to be more than just the sum of its parts.

http://www.highvoltage.org.uk/displaydemoreview.asp?num=3525&band=2177

Album: Hercules And Love Affair - Hercules And Love Affair (DFA/EMI)

Blending high-minded arty concepts with that most purely functional form of music, disco, can be thorny ground. If you over-intellectualise something that purposely lacks depth of intelligence then the whole enterprise tends to crumble under the weight of all that thinking.

This reasoning makes Hercules & Love Affair's debut seem all the more heroic. Fusing art and disco is very much a New York pursuit and H&LA fit right into the canon alongside Arthur Russell, Grace Jones and ZE Records. New York DJ, Andy Butler has assembled a bunch of like-minded aesthetes and freaks to ensure that the balance between highbrow and lowbrow is struck precisely.

While it helps to know your touchstones going into this record, it's not essential. Some of the tracks nod vigorously at the past, like 'This Is My Love', which steals the guitar from Chaz Jankel's 'Glad To Know You', the Frankie Knuckles-referencing opener, 'Time Will' or the jackin' 'You Belong', but it never wanders into shameless nostalgia.

What it most definitely is, at its core, is a modern pop record with some of the best vocal performances in recent years from the rotating cast, most notably Antony Hegarty ('Blind') and Kim-Ann Foxman ('Athene'). Also, take a bow, Tim Goldsworthy. The other half of DFA steps right out of James Murphy's shadow with this crisp, clean production.

Hercules & Love Affair may well pay dutiful respect to NY's past on their magnificent debut, but they also offer us a glimpse into its future. A feast for mind, body and soul, Hercules & Love Affair is nothing short of miraculous.

http://www.highvoltage.org.uk/displaydemoreview.asp?num=3497&band=2174

Album: The Glimmers - The Glimmers Are Gee Gee Fazzi (www.theglimmertwins.com)

It seems the Radiohead bug is catching. The Glimmers have gone one better by giving away CD copies of their debut album at DJ gigs. They could well have made a bit of coin out of this long-player, but keeping it out of the system (not entirely, or I wouldn't be reviewing it) makes them look like they're flicking the vs at the money-grubbing majors and also acts as a neat brickbat-dodge.

Fans would have sniffed at having to fork out for this one, as most of the tracks here have been released before, so making it a freebie is a move both canny and hip. What of the music though? The Glimmers have always been more appealing in theory than practice. Their touchstones (classic Italo, Eurotrash-y rock, Middle Eastern percussion) and their mixes are impeccable, but their own productions have most often been less interesting than their genetic make-up. While this is occasionally the case here, …Gee Gee Fazzi is still an entertaining, fun listen.

Despite the occasional misstep (Princess Superstar's guest spot on 'Wanna Make Out' being the most obnoxious thing the duo have committed to tape), The Glimmers approach the album like a mix, never allowing a song to outstay its welcome. The super-fun take on 'Let's Get Physical', Linn drum workout, 'Kobe's In Columbia' and Lindstrom & Prins Thomas collaboration, 'Music For Dreams' all have massive replay value, but there's an aftertaste of missed opportunity. Thankfully though, while the record's spinning, you'll be enjoying yourself too much to even notice.

http://www.highvoltage.org.uk/displaydemoreview.asp?num=3508&band=2178

Album: Eskimo Volume V Mixed By The Glimmers (Eskimo)

Ever in danger of spreading themselves a little thinly, this is The Glimmers' (aka Mo Becha and David 'Benoelie' Fourquaert) twentieth mix compilation. You know what to expect from the boys these days, especially following their more high profile mixes for both the DJ-Kicks and Fabriclive series, and this one holds very few surprises.

Eskimo Volume V is the usual collision of staples given a different twist and reclaimed for the more discerning dancefloor (this time around it's Primal Scream's 'Loaded' and Trio's 'Da Da Da'), generous helpings of obscure new beat and Italo (Venus Gang's O'Jays-cribbing, 'Love To Fly' and Das Etwas' 'Go Ahead') and some genuinely thrilling discoveries (Dissidenten's supremely beguiling, 'Fata Morgana' and Herb Alpert's shockingly contemporary 'Bullish'). Add to this their own tweakings of the likes of Shirley Bassey, Pop Dell'Arte and Music For Dreams' Kenneth Bager.

So while it feels almost too familiar, it never strays into pedestrian territory and if there's one thing that The Glimmers have perfected in their practice, it's how to keep interest levels at a maximum. They might well be able to do this kind of mix in their sleep these days, but it's to their credit that Eskimo Volume V never threatens to have the same soporific effect on the listener.

http://www.highvoltage.org.uk/displaydemoreview.asp?num=3203&band=492

Album: Midnight Mike - Midnight Karaoke (The Republic Of Desire)

When Mike Silver (aka Midnight Mike) burst onto the underground back in 2002 with the mighty fine, off-kilter electro-pop of 'Round & Around', a lot of the right people saw quite a bit of promise in the guy, me included. He followed that up with a succession of fantastic remixes (most notably for Coloursound's 'Fly With Me' and Playgroup's 'Make It Happen') and continued to impress with his own productions for Flesh and Gomma. It's with a heavy heart that I announce his debut album an almost irretrievable failure.

That it's taken five years for him to pull his finger out and release a full-length is bad enough, but that said debut turns out to be a collection of lazy covers, masquerading as a karaoke party album. The only people having any fun here are the singers as, barring a couple notable exceptions, the versions veer between cringeworthy and just plain pointless.

There are irony-soaked trudges through the likes of 'Money For Nothing', 'Boys (Summertime Love)' (yes, the Sabrina europop number) and 'Tip-Toe Through The Tulips' that border on unlistenable, especially the Dire Straits cover as no matter how sardonically Juice Windscreen delivers the words "faggot" and "homo", it still sounds offensive.

Points are gained for the louche, loungey take on Bo Diddley's 'Who Do You Love?' and the genuinely heartfelt rendition of Roxy's 'In Every Dream Home A Heartache' (by Mike himself), but the rest is just dross that anyone who buys would have every right to feel soundly cheated by. Avoid.

http://www.highvoltage.org.uk/displaydemoreview.asp?num=3209&band=2021

Album: Henrik Schwarz - Live (!K7)

You may not have noticed, but Henrik Schwarz, alongside compatriots and kindred spirits, Ame and Dixon, is reinvigorating techno. Injecting the soul back into the genre after years of mathematical minimalism, Schwarz' brand of techno is more human, organic and danceable than anything that's ever come out of Kompakt or Perlon. Therefore, it's good to see this compilation/DJ mix/live album out there so that the Johnny-come-latelys can catch up on one of the most thrilling things to happen to techno since the birth of Underground Resistance.

Utilising his own productions and remixes, this acts as an instant immersion into Schwarz' idiosyncratic, deep style. Mixed in key and beatmatched to precision, to the untrained ear this may all seem like much of a muchness on first listen, but give it a few more spins and the subtle differences and shifts in mood leap out at you.

The three-song movement from Schwarz' 'Kalimba Dance', into 'Where We At' (with the aforementioned Ame and Dixon) and then onwards and upwards with his remix of Kraak & Smaak's 'No Sun In The Sky' is just jaw-dropping and only topped by the near-orgasmic denouement, starting with his do-over of James Brown's 'It's A Man's World' and climaxing with his own 'Jazz Book #2'. As essential for newbies as it is for the initiated, Live is an entertainingly different spin on the greatest hits set.

While others are disappearing down more and more off-putting navel-gazing rabbit holes (stand up at the back, Villalobos!), it's great to hear someone offering an impassioned, inclusive alternative.

http://www.highvoltage.org.uk/displaydemoreview.asp?num=3197&band=1344

Album: Les Savy Fav - Let's Stay Friends (Wichita)

Les Savy Fav are almost the living definition of the term 'cult band'. They're revered in certain circles for their fearsome live reputation and fitfully tremendous recorded output. Let's Stay Friends ends a six year hiatus from the album format for the band and comes three years after one of the most-loved (by those who've heard it) and most-criminally-ignored singles compilations in living memory, 2004's Inches, an album that both helped and hindered the band in more ways than one.

The biggest fault that Inches highlighted for many is that LSF are a great singles band that have always struggled with the confines of a studio album. The problem with Les Savy Fav – and it's a good problem to have – is that they have that keen an understanding of the dynamics of the short form that they seem to lose scope when it comes to the bigger picture.

Therefore on Let's Stay Friends, as is the case with the rest of their albums, you get great songs, neighboured by samey filler. There are signs of growth however, in songs such as the ominous 'Brace Yourself' which shows that they are learning a thing or two about pacing. Then there's forgettable pop-punk numbers like 'Scotchgard The Credit Card' and 'The Year Before The Year 2000', which undo the band's good work elsewhere on the record.

Whilst it can only be a good thing to have a band of Les Savy Fav's calibre back making albums again, you can't help but think that this is yet another missed opportunity.

http://www.highvoltage.org.uk/displaydemoreview.asp?num=3119&band=1962

N.B.: This grew on me.

Album: The Strange Death Of Liberal England - Forward March! (Fantastic Plastic)

Yet another new British band taking more cues from across the water than close to home, The Strange Death Of Liberal England take the post-rock inflections of Godspeed! You Black Emperor and the communal, hymnal catharsis of The Arcade Fire and turn it into something that never really feels like it's their own.

Now, we all know that there aren't really any original ideas left in music, doubly so in the indie-rock sphere, so the least you can do is be wilfully idiosyncratic and hope that people dig your angle. TSDOLE borrow so much that they often struggle to make their own mark. If it wasn't enough that the song-titles are so overly precious as to be off-putting ('Summer Gave Us Sweets But Autumn Wrought Division'? Please.), most of the music within rehashes ideas that others have already had and realised more fully.

But – and it's a moderately-sized but – when TSDOLE are good, they're pretty great. In 'I Saw Evil', the whole band pull together and fall apart in a violent mess of feedback and cavernous drumming. Also, the baroque pomposity of 'An Old Fashioned War' suits them well, like Gogol Bordello recording for Constellation. When The Strange Death Of Liberal England are firing on all cylinders, their derivativeness is easier to swallow, but elsewhere on Forward March! the lack of a distinguishing voice fails to paper over the cracks. A little nurturing and allowed more time to find their feet though and they could surprise us all.

http://www.highvoltage.org.uk/displaydemoreview.asp?num=2892&band=1622

Album: Chicane - Somersault (Modena)

This record seemingly exists to prove further that the oft-applied blanket term of 'dance music has become just as nondescript as 'rock music' has. Inasmuch as there is very little tying Oasis to Liars, outside of their use of guitars, there is scant correlation between, say, Justice and Chicane. Or is there?

If you cast your mind back to 1996 when Chicane a.k.a. Nick Bracegirdle (a dance producer's name if ever there was one) first released 'Offshore', his breakthrough 12”, trance music was pretty much still a new thing. To some ears, this music was exciting, a euphoric shot in the arm that the nascent dance scene needed to drag it out of the underground. Jump back to the present day and Bracegirdle's stubborn, yet kind of heroic refusal to divert from his initial blueprint has seen him become a dinosaur.

The best electronic artists have always followed the adapt-or-die credo, so the young upstarts such as the Ed Banger crew could view Somersault as a cautionary tale. That is, if they don't envisage themselves soundtracking the drunken dry-humping of the over-dressed, chain pub-dwelling Saturday night hordes come 2017. But therein lies the hidden beauty of this album; its demographic doesn't really care if it's critically-maligned or frowned upon by the likes of me, so long as it provides them with a thumping beat that acts as a pace-setting metronome for the next morning's headache. So, while this sort of thing isn't exactly to my taste, I applaud its honesty and purity.

http://www.highvoltage.org.uk/displaydemoreview.asp?num=2891&band=1849

Single: The Cribs - Moving Pictures (Wichita)

For how much longer will The Cribs have to suffer in the Brit indie c-list while lesser bands who've most likely copped a few moves off them in the past surpass them commercially? My guess is forever because there's just something about The Cribs that suggests they're forever doomed to be the bridesmaids.

Take latest single, 'Moving Pictures'; an eminently lovable shouty, mid-tempo love song, the like of which Ricky Wilson would give his collection of fashionable scarves to write, it's simultaneously great and destined for the bargain bins by the end of August. Why? Well, can you imagine Gary Jarman's pained, impassioned howl gracing a Vodafone commercial? Sure they might get to soundtrack the odd goal montage once the footy season starts, but they'll always edit out the vocals.

You see, The Cribs actually give a shit about their music and that rarely sells. The Cribs then; too good to be famous.

http://www.highvoltage.org.uk/displaydemoreview.asp?num=2896&band=751

Album: GoodBooks - Control (Columbia)

Control is a pretty apposite title for GoodBooks' debut album as they spend most of their time making sure every little aspect of their music is in place. They assemble each song seemingly from the ground up, hanging sonic trinkets on each guitar line and rhythmic pulse. A bell here, a whistle there, but sometimes the intricacy gets in the way of GoodBooks just cutting loose and letting their highly-developed sense for melody take over.

When Control is good, it's very, very good. 'The Curse Of Saul' takes a rinky-dink toy piano house refrain, rips the bassline from Giorgio Moroder's 'Sooner Or Later' and some great white-funk guitar and knocks it out of the park. Also, 'Walk With Me' has a bombastic ambition that is at odds with the increasingly parochial British indie scene.

Elsewhere though, on the torpid 'Good Life Salesman' they're borderline embarrassing. A song that Athlete would pass on for being a bit too wet, it kicks off a mid-album sag that they struggle to recover from. Also, on the otherwise sweet, heartfelt 'Violent Man Lovesong', the self-conscious trickery and need to come off like a British Postal Service just flattens what could have been a beautiful ballad.

If they stop hiding behind their urges to show everyone just how offbeat they are and let the songs speak for themselves they could be a special little pop band. For now though, just the promise of better to come is enough.

http://www.highvoltage.org.uk/displaydemoreview.asp?num=2904&band=1482

Album: Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga (Anti-)

One of the biggest underground bands in America, Spoon, mystifyingly, have yet to make much of an impression over here. Mystifying because Spoon are one of the more Anglophilic American bands of recent times and they're also pretty great.

Spoon's sixth album follows the critically-acclaimed, yet fan-dividing Gimme Fiction, their most distinctly hi-fi release to date. Although that album had its share of highlights, it also had some sag, so it's heartening that they've returned to the fat-free feel of Girls Can Tell and Kill The Moonlight. Always a production nut's wet dream, Spoon up the ante here with some seriously intricate arrangements that make Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga one of the most rewarding listens of 2007 thus far, despite its 36 minute running time.

The paranoid strut of 'Don't Make Me A Target' is a classic Spoon opener, both instantly fortifying and sonically arresting. As always, it makes great use of space and depth to create an edifying surround-sound effect. Elsewhere, 'The Ghost Of You Lingers' is propelled by a Phillip Glass-like piano line that acts as melody and rhythm while Britt Daniel's voice floats spectrally above and 'My Little Japanese Cigarette Case' is all Pixies menace and malevolence, only less unhinged, more gentrified and more disturbing.

'You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb' and 'Finer Feelings' are two of the best songs that Spoon have ever recorded. The former a brassy, Brill Building stomp with added weirdness, while the latter, with its circular melody and pleasingly ill-fitting Mikey Dread sample, manages to be both supremely catchy and maddeningly slippery. In the end, it's difficult to pick highlights from an album this strong. For once, the Americans are way ahead of the curve and it's us that have some catching up to do.

http://www.highvoltage.org.uk/displaydemoreview.asp?num=2831&band=1819

Album: Sonic Youth - Daydream Nation Deluxe Edition (Universal)

Arguably the greatest album to come out of the American alt-rock/college rock/indie/whatever scene of the 1980s (forget You're Living All Over Me, Document and Zen Arcade, although Surfer Rosa runs it close), it initially surprised me and I'm sure a lot of other people when word got out it was due for a remastering and expanding. I mean, how do you improve on perfection, right? My copy of Daydream Nation on CD still sounds pretty great, so what could you do to it to trick us fans into trading our old for new?

Well, this reissue takes the "let's just make it louder and add some live stuff" approach, and you know what? It achieves the impossible; Sonic Youth and Universal have made the already great even better. The new re-fit succeeds in making this peerless record that little bit greater. The original's expansive-yet-raw production isn't sacrificed on the altar of the shiny and new and the bonus disc of live cuts of each album track is completely essential in documenting one of America's most fascinating bands at a time when they were really on top of their game.

Also, it's just a timely excuse to revisit the album and see if it is still better than everything that came before and since. Well, of course it is. Daydream Nation still acts as a distillation of every great rock movement that pre-dated it while lighting the way for all the bands that followed their lead (Nirvana… um, that's about it). Sonic Youth have never made an album as good as this since, but then again, neither has anyone else. Dense, immediate, limitlessly rewarding, you really don't have any excuse for not owning this anymore. Then again, you didn't have one before either.

http://www.highvoltage.org.uk/displaydemoreview.asp?num=2798&band=187

Album: Prins Thomas - Cosmo Galactic Prism (Eskimo)

Ever since 2 Many DJs belched forth the dizzying As Heard On Radio Soulwax Pt. 2, DJ mixes seem to have become more and more eclectic. That's not to say that the Dewaele brothers were the first to blend disparate elements into a cohesive whole, but since the Soulwax boys brought the magpie effect closer to the mainstream, DJs haven't thought twice about mixing together rock, hip-hop, techno, house, disco, prog, whatever, in the name of the all-encompassing party mix.

You can now add Prins Thomas to that list, but rather than following the herd, Thomas appears to be operating in a field of one. One listen to Cosmo Galactic Prism will make you reassess everything you know about the art of a good DJ mix. Thomas takes logical leaps that really shouldn't work, but his touch is so light-fingered that everything flows together so naturally as to make you reach for the superlatives with every transition.

Who else would kick off a two-disc mix with something as deliciously odd as Joe Meek's 'I Hear A New World'? The munchkin voices and spacey slo-mo bossa backing herald the fact that this is going to be a mix, the like of which you'll have never heard before. Over the course of two-and-a-half hours, Thomas takes in the kraut-disco of Holger Czukay's 'Cool In The Pool', the sub-bass-heavy deep house of Soylent Green's 'Camera Obscura', Bob James' skewed jazz-funker 'Moonbop' and his own queasy, lolloping edit of The Honeymoon Killers' 'Decollage' and moulds them all in his own inimitable style. Where other mixes from lesser DJs tend to bore after an hour, Thomas holds your attention for double that and then some.

It's a trip, for sure, and one that you'll happily spend with your jaw adjacent to the floor. Totally, unequivocally essential.

http://www.highvoltage.org.uk/displaydemoreview.asp?num=2784&band=492

Album: Night Of The Brain - Wear This World Out (Station 55)

When Super_Collider went their separate ways, who would have guessed at the different career paths both Jamie Lidell and Cristian Vogel would take. Whilst Lidell always fancied himself as a closet funkateer, no-one could have foreseen Vogel's abandonment of body music entirely with his Night Of The Brain project.

Quite what possessed Vogel to form a bog-standard, faintly experimental art-rock band is unclear, but it's obvious that this is a style that doesn't exactly fit him like the proverbial glove. It's hard to see any traces of the man who released all those fine techno records on Tresor and NovaMute here, even if there is a fair dollop of incongruous electronics invading the Sonic Youth-esque squall. In fact, he's made recent references to abandoning the "banal and stagnant" techno scene altogether. If he thinks that this kind of music is the way forward then he's sorely mistaken.

Not that rock 'n' roll is dead or anything, far from it, but this is indistinguishable from any amount of alt-rock bands unafraid to dip an occasional toe into the dance music sphere. The lyrics are witless, melodies forgettable and any points of interest that arise out of the liberal use of programmed beats are undersold by the general hackery of everything else going on. 'Connecting Changes' in particular is a good idea ruined by laughable epithets like "Like when my dog died. Woof! A picture of him chasing his tail up the old tree" (?!).

You could call this a missed opportunity if you're feeling generous, but it's an avenue that Vogel really shouldn't have bothered venturing down in the first place. Brain-dead and almost completely devoid of any redeeming features, something tells me that Wear This World Out won't have quite the impact that Lidell's Multiply has.

http://www.highvoltage.org.uk/displaydemoreview.asp?num=2747&band=1785

Album: Von Sudenfed - Tromatic Reflexxions (Domino)

Von Sudenfed's debut album is the culmination of a meeting of minds between Mouse On Mars' Andi Toma and Jan St. Werner and rock curmudgeon, Mark E. Smith. In fact, it's less meeting of minds, more recorded argument. MES hasn't sounded this disjointed and fiery in many a year and Toma and St. Werner's futureshock beats and bleeps have a way of making the whole affair sound like they're trying to put the musical restraints on Smith, but all the while he's kicking, screaming, biting and refusing to be sedated.

This brings forth an uncompromising, noisy record that, at its heart would like to be a pop album. Neither Mark E. Smith nor Mouse On Mars do 'pop' particularly well, but it's a hell of a lot of fun listening to them try. On album opener, 'Fledermaus Can't Get It', Smith spits increasingly venomous vitriol atop splenetic, fuzzed out breaks and buzzing, ravey synth noise. They then follow this up with 'The Rhinohead', the album's most immediate track, owing more than a little debt to Northern Soul music. It's less homage than blitzkrieging air raid on Wigan Casino however, with Smith and MOM obliterating the bennied-up twisters from above while snarling and cackling.

It doesn't all work though, 'Chicken Yiamas' is virtually unlistenable and 'Jbak Lois Lane' (essentially just Smith shouting at someone while a lawnmower buzzes away in the background) feels more like a prank on the listener. When it hits though, it throws up some of the most exciting musical moments of the year so far, as on the sub-bass-laden grime of 'Flooded' or the disco inflections of 'That Sound Wiped'. An adventurous hook-up that manages to be brilliant against all odds.

http://www.highvoltage.org.uk/displaydemoreview.asp?num=2682&band=1759

Album: Sunkissed Mixed By G-Ha & Olanskii (Smalltown Supersound)

It's a well-known fact in the industry that the music press are likely to shift units off the back of a scene. Most of these scenes are constructs and are doomed to fail, but if the NME get a spike in their numbers for a few weeks, who cares, right?

Anyone with half a brain will approach such scenes with a cynical eye, careful not to be sucked in, but there are always a few genuine movements borne of a sense of mutual appreciation and community spirit. One of the few worth taking an interest in is the Norwegian dance music scene. A vibrant part of Norway's counter-culture for the best part of a decade, it appears to be reaching somewhat of a peak with international interest in the country's fertile cosmic disco outpourings. Triggered by the likes of Lindstrom & Prins Thomas and Rune Lindbaek and culminating in this document curated by Norway's premier club night, Sunkissed, an astonishingly dynamic and energetic mix showcasing a winning eclecticism and sense of a group of like-minded people all pushing in the same direction.

My only gripe with the mix is that the Norway only policy feels limiting, hindering G-Ha & Olanskii's efforts to forge their own identity. As a snapshot of one of music's most fascinating subgenres though, it's a thrilling ride. Highlights come thick and fast, but it's worth pointing out Mungolian Jetset's two remix contributions for their all-over-the-shop cheekiness, Magnus International's New Order-esque atmos-disco, 'Kosmetisk' and Mental Overdrive's stunning space rock rework of 120 Days' 'Come Out, Come Down, Fade Out, Be Gone'. This is one that you're going to want to own, before all your hipster friends grow beards and start claiming that they had all Todd Terje's Supreme Edits series from the first press.

http://www.highvoltage.org.uk/displaydemoreview.asp?num=2687&band=492