Milky Wimpshake "Heart And Soul In The Milky Way" (Fortuna Pop!): Tullycraft "Lost In Light Rotation" (Fortuna Pop!): Mark Morris "Complicated Connection" (Ketra Recordings): Sven Wittekind "Voodoo" (Sick Weird Rough): Ross Alexander "Rhapsody of Discontent" (Forte Techno)
Mmmm. Even tighter for time tonight. Five albums, five minutes.
We heart Milky Wimpshake to the very fullest (see here for evidence), but we're getting diminishing returns from their records now, much as "Letraset Angle" or "Without You" still feature heavily on our summer playlists. Tullycraft, on the other hand, have possibly never been quite as consistent: "Lost In Light Rotation" really might be their best album yet (at least half the tracks would have served with distinction as singles) and they remain 24-carat adorable, much as we yearn to one day discover their dark heart.
Ketra label boss Mark Morris has taken the er, *bold* step of making his first LP a 33-track affair that lasts three-and-a-half hours. (That's not an album; that's an afternoon). It's a journey worth embarking on if you get the time - not least for the variety on show, ranging from the riveting "Methodist" to should-be chillout classic "Because I Love U", which deserves to be shoulder-charging Guetta et al out of the charts - but we would have been quite content, especially after recent Sick Weird Rough single "Manipulose", for him to have distilled "Complicated Connection" into a somewhat more digestible form.
In this company, SWR honcho Sven Wittekind's "Voodoo" set seems a mere trifle, a trinket, spreading its 14 tracks over 'only' 100 minutes: again, we could have done with three or four of the tunes being excised, but there's no doubt (despite the "high concept" apparently behind the LP, and the terrible sleeve art) that he remains serenely on top of his game, with closing nugget "To Be Continued" hinting at exciting things to come, perhaps acknowledging that he's now perfected his hypnotic minimal techno barrage, and presaging a change of direction.
Finally, if perhaps you're yearning for more subtlety, then we'd counsel giving Ross Alexander's début album a listen: calling it "Rhapsody Of Discontent" might sound like it's a paean to disillusionment, a fevered "state of the nation" pitch, but this record doesn't lack for positive energy or atmosphere at all, the Scotsman steering an assured path between reflective song fragments and invigorating dancefloor-huggers.A little like a techno equivalent of Kryptic Minds' "One Of Us", this is as cerebral as visceral, an album that tugs emotions and thought-lines far more than some think instrumental electronic music has any right to.
Comments